Anaconda/Features/NoLoader

Get rid of anaconda's loader

Summary

Stop using our old, crufty, hard-to-maintain C-based custom initrd. Move everything out of loader and into dracut or anaconda proper.

Owner

• Will Woods

Current status

• Targeted release: Fedora 17
• Last updated: Nov. 14, 2011
• Percentage of completion: 50%

Detailed Description

Since 1999, anaconda has been divided into two parts:

• stage1, a.k.a. initrd.img: the blue and red text loader environment (no shell, no virtual terminals, just a custom startup binary written in C - statically linked until 2008)
• stage2, a.k.a. install.img: the full installer environment (for graphical or text installs), complete with Python interpreter and shells and stuff.

In olden days, loader did what its name says - it loaded the stage2 (full graphical) anaconda environment and did a couple other tasks required to reach that objective. Those other tasks include things like:

• Prompting for language and keyboard (if loader goes interactive for one of the other tasks)
• Bringing up the network (if required by one of the other tasks)
• Fetching kickstart files, product.img, and updates.img (if requested)
• Loading driver disks (if required)
• Running media check

Most of the time, all of these things are skipped or happen automatically. If you use a boot.iso, you will most likely never see anything besides a blue background and the "Loading anaconda..." message. This means it's a whole lot of code that is just special cases and receives less testing all the time. Further, it's a special environment: It's newt, it's C, it's old, and it's another layer of stuff getting execed between startup and anaconda.

We need to decide how many of these tasks anaconda still needs to do. For those that are still important, they need to move either into the initramfs (if it's something that needs to happen before anaconda can start) or into the main anaconda program - or some other tool that anaconda can run when we're in the full graphical environment. Everything else should go away.

This may mean we keep some sort of loader-like program, but it could be Python based and non-interactive.

Benefit to Fedora

• Maintainability!
  • Gobs of custom code will move into upstream dracut modules or nice neat Python modules.
  • New stuff added to dracut will automatically appear in the installer!
• Debuggability!
  • There's a shell available as soon as the installer boots
  • Every part of the anaconda startup process becomes much easier to modify, since it's all shell or python
• Flexibility!
  • Moving to dracut-based initramfs means that anaconda can mount anything that dracut can mount
    • preupgrade won't need need to cram files into /boot anymore!
• Consistency!
  • The installer boots up the same way as a normal system, and the same as the Live images

Scope

There's 3 major sets of things that loader does: interactive screens, boot arguments, and kickstart commands.

Work In Progress
These sections are still being filled in. Contents are volatile. Filling may be hot.

Interactive Screens

All interactive prompts presented by loader will either be moved later (into anaconda proper) or earlier (configure on boot commandline).

Step Names	Status	Handled By	Notes	Complete?
STEP_LANG	move	anaconda	already present in anaconda UI	Yes
STEP_KBD	move	anaconda	already present in anaconda UI	Yes
STEP_METHOD	boot opt	dracut	only needed for netboot. use repo=, verify validity, give clear error message on failure
STEP_DRIVER	boot opt	dracut	unlikely, usually represents a bug. use rd.driver.pre and/or rd.driver.post to manually load drivers. fail with a clear error message if we can't find usable devices at boot.
STEP_DRIVERDISK	boot opt	dracut	make dd/driverdisk take an argument specifying location.
STEP_NETWORK STEP_IFACE STEP_IP	boot opt	dracut	configure network at boot prompt if network required and unconfigured, try autoconfig (dhcp/auto6/etc).
STEP_EXTRAS	keep	dracut	non-interactive check for updates.img/product.img inside installation source

Boot Options

Not a complete option list
Some options (e.g. autostep, nogpt) are handled by the main anaconda program and don't need to be changed.

Some boot options may be removed, since they no longer apply.
Anything that says deprecate will still be accepted (with a warning/error message) for a release or two.

Boot Option	Status	Handled in	Notes	Done?
askmethod	REMOVE	bootloader	use repo=	YES
asknetwork	REMOVE	bootloader	use ip=	YES
blacklist=<module>	DEPRECATE	dracut	rd.driver.blacklist=<module>
dd driverdisk	KEEP	dracut
display=<display>	KEEP?	anaconda	just exports DISPLAY=<display>
gdb
graphical text cmdline	KEEP	anaconda	anaconda can figure this out itself
keymap=<keymap>	KEEP	dracut	Implies vconsole.keymap=<keymap>
ks	KEEP	dracut
lang	KEEP	dracut	Implies locale.LANG (and/or locale.LC_ALL?)
loglevel	KEEP
mediacheck
method	DEPRECATE	dracut	repo
nofirewire	REMOVE		blacklist=firewire-ohci
nokill
nopass
noprobe
noshell	REMOVE		Does nothing.	YES
nousb	REMOVE	kernel	the kernel handles nousb itself these days.	YES
noverifyssl
repo	KEEP	dracut	set root=live:XXX from repo value
rescue	KEEP
selinux noselinux
serial	DEPRECATE		console=ttyS0
sshd
syslog
updates
utf8
vncpassword
NETWORK
Boot Option	Status	Handled in	Notes	Done?
ip	MODIFIED	dracut	ip={dhcp|dhcp6|auto6|ibft} see dracut.kernel(7) and items below
ipv6	DEPRECATE	dracut	ip={[v6addr:goes::here]|auto6|dhcp6}
dns=<ip>	DEPRECATE	dracut	nameserver=<ip>
gateway=<gw> netmask=<nm>	DEPRECATE	dracut	ip=<ip>::<gw>:<nm>:<hostname>:<iface>
dhcpclass
dhcptimeout
ethtool
mtu	KEEP	dracut
ksdevice	KEEP	dracut	add special handling for link, bootif, ibft?
kssendmac kssendsn	KEEP	dracut
linksleep
nicdelay
noipv4
noipv6
proxy
essid
wepkey wpakey

Kickstart Commands

This is not the main kickstart parser
loader only handles commands that might be needed to find the anaconda runtime. The anaconda runtime contains the normal kickstart parser which handles all the usual kickstart commands.

Yes, loader has its own kickstart parser. Here are the kickstart items it cares about.

Kickstart Command	Handled by	Notes	Done?
lang keyboard	dracut	see lang/keymap above
network	dracut	see dns/mtu/dhcpclass/etc. above
mediacheck	dracut
install	dracut	includes cdrom, harddrive, nfs, and url
selinux	anaconda	systemd loads SELinux policy if needed	Yes
graphical text cmdline	anaconda
vnc	dracut
updates	dracut
driverdisk	dracut
%include	dracut

Test Plan

The normal Install Test Plans should suffice.

User Experience

TBD. Some notes:

• We may remove all the interactive bits, so a few things there used to be (crappy text-based) UI for will now be configured on the boot commandline and/or in the bootloader menu.
• Some of the anaconda boot options may change or become deprecated.
  • We will do our best to keep backwards compatibility - for a few releases.

Dependencies

TBD; currently none.

Contingency Plan

Leave the system as-is - one big combined image, with loader still setting up for anaconda.