Mark Hamzy wrote:
Hello, I am working on a feature for the 390 architecture called reipl. It allows the vm to be rebooted into a specific partition. On scenario where this would be usefull is after the initial install, the vm should boot from the newly installed partition and not from the reader (where it initially booted from).
One feature of LILO I miss is the ability to run the lilo command to select a menu entry to be used for the next boot and only the next boot. I think I would like to see something akin to this on intellish hardware: rather than interacting with firmware (which _I_ don't understand and am not sure that it's sufficiently standard), I'd see it being done on the first disk used to boot: usually, the MBR of the partition containing /boot. It might be worth having a chat with your other server groups to see whether this addresses a problem the have, with the idea of coming up with a solution that looks, as much as possible, the same on all IBM platforms.
It constists of three peices. 1) A Python module, Reipl.py, which reads and writes the settings from the firmware (among other things). 2) A patch to anaconda main python module. At the end of the installation, it will call Reipl.py with the boot partition. It will then write the success of reipl into a file called /var/run/sigusr. 3) A patch to anaconda's loader to read the file /var/run/sigusr and send the appropriate signal (either shutdown or reboot) to linuxrc process. Open issues: 1) Currently, Reipl.py is hard installed into /usr/sbin. I would like to create an rpm package for Reipl consisting of just that file. Is /usr/sbin a good place for it?
It's not clear to me _when_ this program is used. If you package it as an rpm and installed on the target system, then Anaconda can run it from there, but should chroot() to do so.
If it might be used during the ordinary use of a Linux guest (as it might be, if you have a recovery disk to IPL, repair something, then IPL that something in the same VM), then packaging it and installing to /usr/sbin or /usr/bin is sensible. If it's only to be used at install time, then you need to consider how it gets into the install image. Someone else might address that, I'm not very good with that snake either.
/sbin and /bin should be used for executables required before /usr gets mounted. See www.pathname.com where the FHS might be found.
Your Anaconda patch looks to me (see below for my snake-handling skills) like it expects a Python module, but the code looks like an ordinary executable.
2) /usr/sbin is not in sys.path. I have to append sys.path before importing Reipl. Is this okay?
I could not see where reipl executes any external program (but my python is strictly limited). If it's not executing other programs, PATH is unimportant.
Did you get the idea I'm writing this backwards? You should have:-)
Take a look at the Linux Omni Printer Driver Framework at http://omniprint.sourceforge.net/
I did, when it was new and (I think) hosted at IBM. I don't any more use any of the printers it supports, but I was really glad to see it.
Cheers John -- spambait 1aaaaaaa@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Z1aaaaaaa@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx -- Advice http://webfoot.com/advice/email.top.php http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555375 You cannot reply off-list:-) _______________________________________________ Anaconda-devel-list mailing list Anaconda-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/anaconda-devel-list
