Bug 488540

Summary:	RFE: Unified Way to Refer to Installation Media
Product:	[Fedora] Fedora	Reporter:	Daniel Qarras <dqarras>
Component:	anaconda	Assignee:	Anaconda Maintenance Team <anaconda-maint-list>
Status:	CLOSED UPSTREAM	QA Contact:	Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	low
Version:	rawhide	CC:	anaconda-maint-list
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2009-03-29 10:16:03 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Daniel Qarras 2009-03-04 18:57:35 UTC

Description of problem:
Anaconda handles CD and USB installations differently, one can refer to installation CD by using device name (/dev/sd??) independent syntax ks=cdrom:/path/ks.cfg. However, for USB no similar syntax is available, using something like ks=hd:sdb1:/path/ks.cfg is dependent on the system where installation is done.

It would be nice to have something like ks=src:/path/ks.cfg.

It also seems that in case of ks=... path being incorrect, CD installation will automagically check for /updates directory for updates.img etc but this does not happen with USB installations. Also in this case unification between CD/USB/DVD/SD/etc would be highly beneficial as scripting to create kickstart files etc becomes much easier and with a large set of users and systems it is impossible to know all the combinations they are used beforehand.

Comment 1 Chris Lumens 2009-03-26 19:17:33 UTC

I've never really liked the cdrom: shortcut, but it works because most people really only have one optical device.  However, you can have many USB drives attached at any one time which makes providing such a shortcut a little impractical.

However, recently we have added the ability to specify devices by both label and UUID.  So, you could do:

ks=hd:LABEL=whatever:/path/ks.cfg or ks=hd:UUID=1234-5678-9abc:/path/ks.cfg

That doesn't require you to play a guessing game with device nodes between computers.  Does this capability provide what you are looking for?

Comment 2 Daniel Qarras 2009-03-29 10:15:36 UTC

> ks=hd:LABEL=whatever:/path/ks.cfg or ks=hd:UUID=1234-5678-9abc:/path/ks.cfg
> 
> That doesn't require you to play a guessing game with device nodes between
> computers.  Does this capability provide what you are looking for?

Yes! This is exactly what I needed and - to be very honest - implemented much smarter than I was personally thinking! (As a very modest request I hope this will be added to the documentation some day :)

Thanks a lot, I'll close this one!