clumens and I were discussing the --noformat option in kickstart files
today (sort of came out of bug #652417, but this is a larger proposal)
and how we should have a policy in place for people who want to prepare
their own filesystems.
First, for those not familiar with the --noformat option, see:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Anaconda/Kickstart
It is a valid option for part, raid, volgroup, and logvol. It instructs
anaconda to not run the mkfs command to initialize the volume. It tells
anaconda to assume the volume is ready for use.
The primary use of --noformat is for people using a %pre script to set
up complex mount points and then direct anaconda to use then as-is. A
common pitfall is people passing --noformat for the / volume definition,
which can result in an unusable system.
After discussing the issues for a while, we came up with:
(1) Add a new option to the %pre script definition called
--mountpoint=PATH. A pre script defined this way would be treated as a
volume preparation script and would executed after other %pre scripts
lacking the --mountpoint parameter.
(2) Volume preparation scripts must prepare only a single mount point.
On success, they should exit with a status of 0.
(3) Any storage command used for / with the --noformat option would
require a '%pre --mountpoint=/' script. If the script is missing or the
exit code is non-zero, installation would stop.
Obviously, this doesn't prevent people from creating '%pre
--mountpoint=/' scripts that just have "exit 0" as the only line, but
that's NOTABUG.
For non-root mount points using the --noformat option, we could have an
optional check users could enable to cause anaconda to check the exit
code of the %pre script. Our first thought was that anaconda should
only enforce the one for /, but users might want it for other mount
points. Something like:
%pre --mountpoint=/home
...
DO STUFF
...
exit 0
%end
...
part /home --onpart=sda47 --noformat --checkuserinit
Where --checkuserinit tells anaconda to check for a successful return
code of the %pre script that sets up that mount point.
Thoughts? Comments? Wayland?
--
David Cantrell <dcantrell@xxxxxxxxxx>
Red Hat / Honolulu, HI
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