> On 4 Oct 2024, at 16:05, Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek <zbyszek@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Hi folks, > > I was recently doing a bunch of test reinstalls of Fedora [1], > looking to see if it's complicated to retain the user directories > during a reinstall. The answer is, sadly, that it's possible only with > some manual tinkering. This is a known problem [2]. > > With a little bit of trickery, Anaconda will let the "home" subvolume > be and install the system to a new "root" subvolume, so user data is > preserved. But then after a reboot a new user will be created, because > the old user is not hooked up into /etc/passwd. > > We actually have a partial solution for this: systemd-homed. > With systemd-homed the information about the user is maintained in the > user directory/subvolume/partition, e.g. /home/username.homedir. > After a reinstall, ideally nothing needs to be done and the user > account is ready to be used. I like the idea of being able to reinstall and keep the /home. But I'd rather not use systemd-homed to get the feature. I already have full-disk-encryption for security. What about having the necessary meta data in a per user file in /home and read that when doing the reinstall? I would have /home/barry and /home/barry.metadata for example. Barry > > The primary purpose of systemd-homed is to use per-user encryption > using loopback devices. This still has various problem related to > resizing and suspend. Work is being done [see 3,4 for recent developments], > but it's not at a point where we can recommend it. > But systemd-homed has a mode where the user "home" is just a normal > directory or btrfs subvolume with some metadata stored in files [5]. > Some work would be needed [6] to make this work smoothly, but it > doesn't seem like too much. (Mostly filing down some rough edges > in systemd-homed and adding pam_home_systemd and nss_systemd > in various authselect profiles.) > > Thus the question: would this be something worth looking into? > > [1] https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/feedback-anaconda-web-ui-partitioning/108995/65 > [2] https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/its-difficult-to-reformat-a-btrfs-partition-subvolume-in-the-installer/89052 > [3] https://cfp.all-systems-go.io/all-systems-go-2024/talk/FFY3BB/ > [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e3IhBBU0JY > [5] https://systemd.io/HOME_DIRECTORY/ > [6] When I tested this today, this actually doesn't work. > systemd-homed does a misguided check that break reinstalls. > We'd need to figure out some solution here. Most likely just > conditionalize that part of the code. > > Zbyszek > -- > _______________________________________________ > devel mailing list -- devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > To unsubscribe send an email to devel-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ > List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines > List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue -- _______________________________________________ devel mailing list -- devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe send an email to devel-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
