Hello Arch devs and users,
here is my holidays present for you: AIF alpha-0.6 !
* Changes since alpha 0.5:
- fully reworked disk subsystem
- support for lvm and dm_crypt
- Autoprepare looks exactly the same (ui-wise)
- Manual mode UI is entirely reworked and has a general editor (see
screens)
- Unified, more flexible/reusable backend code for partitioning,
making filesystems and mounting them. Uses structured file formats for
defining partitions and filesystems
- Rollback functionality: when something failed while processing, or
user changes his mind afterwards, you can do a rollback (things like
umount, lvremove etc are done automatically in the correct order) and
start over/retry
- fully decoupled UI (dia/cli):
- there are now generic, transparent functions for asking
dates,numbers,strings,checklist,.. etc with an implementation in both
ncurses (dialog) and cli.
- all code now uses these functions, making the codebase much cleaner.
(look at the code for autoprepare for instance)
- with a simple command line flag you can toggle between running the
program in cli or dialog mode.
- support for commandline args
- /arch/aif -p interactive -d # runs the interactive profile with
debugging enabled
- /arch/aif -p interactive -i cli # runs the interactive profile in
CLI mode.
- updated howto for using AUR packages
- replaced all refs to previous name (fifa) to aif.
- enabled date/time setting
- a massive amount of bugfixes
- a lot of code cleanups
* Screenshots
- AIF manual filesystems, here showing a setup with /dev/sda3 containing
a dm_crypt, containing /, and /dev/sda3 containing an LVM setup with 1
LV for /home
http://users.edpnet.be/dieter/aif/aif-alpha_0.6-disks-overview-dia.png
- Processing the filesystems. The installer automatically reorders
everything
http://users.edpnet.be/dieter/aif/aif-alpha_0.6-disks-processing-dia.png
- a CLI shot where the partitions/filesystems of the autoprepare just
have been processed
http://users.edpnet.be/dieter/aif/aif-alpha_0.6-autoprepare_processed-cli.png
* Usability
I tested the installer personally in virtualbox in different scenarios
(ftp & cdrom based, autoprepare, manually with normal disk layout,/ on
lvm, dm_crypt,.. ), and all produced working installations.
Although I often need to fix bugs after testing a specific scenario, I
don't re-test all scenarios each time. YMMV
Note that the installer doesn't automatically add the lvm2/encrypt
modules to mkinitcpio yet, and doesn't add the right string for
lvm/dm_crypt in grubs menu.lst yet.
There are some known issues (which are not critical, just avoid them or
live with them). Here are the biggest ones (for more, see TODO)
- don't remove lvm LV's if you have more then one in one lvm VG. So
think before you create :-)
- make the correct devicemapper devices directly because they are not
cleaned up correctly if you remove them again
- keyboard and timezone settings from installer don't go into target
systems config
- long selections (eg packages) are very cumbersome to do in CLI mode.
- rollback of dm_crypt partitions doesn't work yet
* How?
http://github.com/Dieterbe/aif/tree/master/HOWTO
Use package aif-git from AUR.
Even though I tag releases in git, I don't build packages for them.
I now use the master branch as "stable" branch where I pull in code from
the experimental branch after it has been tested.
So the master branch (package aif-git) always contains the latest,
stable code.
Use "/arch/aif -p interactive -d" (the interactive procedure is the port
of /arch/setup)
Have fun,
Dieter
