Bug 1961457

Summary:	RFE: Allow product configuration to specify multiple default base repos and update repos
Product:	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8	Reporter:	Neal Gompa <ngompa13>
Component:	anaconda	Assignee:	Anaconda Maintenance Team <anaconda-maint-list>
Status:	CLOSED WONTFIX	QA Contact:	Release Test Team <release-test-team-automation>
Severity:	unspecified	Docs Contact:
Priority:	unspecified
Version:	CentOS Stream	CC:	bstinson, carl, davide, jwboyer, michel, vponcova
Target Milestone:	beta	Keywords:	FutureFeature
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Last Closed:	2022-11-18 07:27:46 UTC	Type:	Bug
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oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description Neal Gompa 2021-05-18 01:42:57 UTC

Description of problem:
In the CentOS Stream Hyperscale SIG, we're working on building a spin to showcase our work on top of CentOS. However, something that I ran into is that Anaconda has hard-wired assumptions of a singular base repo and hard-wired update repos.

This needs to be made configurable in the product configuration file so that SIGs can declare multiple base repositories.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
33.16.4.15-1.el8.0.2

Additional info:
It seems like this was partially implemented in Anaconda 34 to support declaring update repositories: https://github.com/rhinstaller/anaconda/pull/3023

However, there is no equivalent counterpart for base repositories.

Comment 2 Vendula Poncova 2021-05-18 13:24:09 UTC

Hi Neal,

we plan to drop the concept of a base repo and support a list of repositories instead. It is the next step of our Anaconda modularization effort. I am not able to estimate the impact of this change yet, but I don't think we will be able to backport it to RHEL.

We could probably backport the updates_repositories configuration option and move the list of allowed base repo names into the configuration files, but that will not enable multiple base repos. Have you tried to use the support for the closest mirror? Couldn't you use additional repositories instead of multiple base repositories?

Comment 3 Neal Gompa 2021-05-18 13:29:57 UTC

(In reply to Vendula Poncova from comment #2)
> Hi Neal,
> 
> we plan to drop the concept of a base repo and support a list of
> repositories instead. It is the next step of our Anaconda modularization
> effort. I am not able to estimate the impact of this change yet, but I don't
> think we will be able to backport it to RHEL.
> 

That's awesome, I guess this would be in RHEL 9 Anaconda, though?

> We could probably backport the updates_repositories configuration option and
> move the list of allowed base repo names into the configuration files, but
> that will not enable multiple base repos. Have you tried to use the support
> for the closest mirror? Couldn't you use additional repositories instead of
> multiple base repositories?

I could use additional repositories. The main thing is I don't want it to be easy for people to accidentally set a broken configuration. And I want it to be configuration I can ship in a package so that it's easy for me to build media with it.

Comment 4 Vendula Poncova 2021-05-18 14:12:32 UTC

(In reply to Neal Gompa from comment #3)
> (In reply to Vendula Poncova from comment #2)
> > Hi Neal,
> > 
> > we plan to drop the concept of a base repo and support a list of
> > repositories instead. It is the next step of our Anaconda modularization
> > effort. I am not able to estimate the impact of this change yet, but I don't
> > think we will be able to backport it to RHEL.
> > 
> 
> That's awesome, I guess this would be in RHEL 9 Anaconda, though?
> 

It will be in RHEL 10.

> > We could probably backport the updates_repositories configuration option and
> > move the list of allowed base repo names into the configuration files, but
> > that will not enable multiple base repos. Have you tried to use the support
> > for the closest mirror? Couldn't you use additional repositories instead of
> > multiple base repositories?
> 
> I could use additional repositories. The main thing is I don't want it to be
> easy for people to accidentally set a broken configuration. And I want it to
> be configuration I can ship in a package so that it's easy for me to build
> media with it.

When the source is set to a closest mirror, the installer should be able to use every enabled repository found in /etc/anaconda.repos.d (unless we think it is an update repository). One of the repos needs to be have a name of a base repo, but otherwise, we don't really care what is there. At least, that's how I understand it.

About the additional repositories, I guess we could figure out how to specify them from the Anaconda configuration files. However, people can still disable these in the Source spoke.

Comment 6 RHEL Program Management 2022-11-18 07:27:46 UTC

After evaluating this issue, there are no plans to address it further or fix it in an upcoming release.  Therefore, it is being closed.  If plans change such that this issue will be fixed in an upcoming release, then the bug can be reopened.