Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Kamil Paral]

> On Thu, Jan 12, 2017 at 1:11 PM, Chris Murphy 
> wrote:
> >If you
> > pick Server or Cloud Edition using Everything netinstall, you get ext4
> > on LVM with a massive /home volume rather unsuitable for servers, and
> > no free space in the VG for docker-storage-setup to configure for
> > itself. Everything netinstall's partitioning is the same as
> > Workstation's.
> 
> That's wrong. Everything does something no other product does. It's
> ext4 on LVM, with just root and swap LV's, with root taking up all the
> space not reserved for swap. So...it'd work for Workstation and
> Server, but it's not the WG intended layout where /home is separate
> for Workstation, and for Server they want XFS and reserve space in the
> VG for other purposes (separate /var possibly or space for
> docker-storage-setup for containers). So I'd say while non-fatal, it's
> also not ideal for any of the products and thus not worth blocking on.

I lived under the impression that Workstation netinst only offers you 
Workstation package set by default, and Server netinst the Server package set. 
That was my major concern, not partitioning layout. But I tried it again today, 
and I see all package sets on both images. So I was clearly wrong.

The partitioning setup on Everything netinst seems to me to be actually the 
best universal choice for any use case (it's not the intended setup for any 
flavor, yes, but still better than e.g. having a Workstation with Server 
partitioning layout, or vice versa). For Workstation users, the only case where 
you need to install from Everything netinst is when a) your hardware can't boot 
Workstation Live b) Workstation netinst has optical boot broken c) you can't 
boot from USB. That's such an edge case, that I don't think it's a problem to 
have a different partitioning setup. It's a last resort help and you can be 
expected to manually setup the partitioning differently if you don't like the 
universal one. For Server, you'll need to use Everything netinst if a) both 
Server DVD and Server netinst have optical boot broken b) you can't boot from 
USB or PXE (or some of those remote CDROM methods). Since Server people are 
more technical, I hope setting up a custom layout (if the universal one doesn't 
fit) is not such a big problem. The most likely use case here goes to KDE (or 
any of the non-release-blocking spins). If your hardware can't boot KDE Live or 
the image has its optical boot broken, your immediate next choice is Everything 
netinst. And in this case, the universal partition layout is again better than 
e.g. if you booted Server netinst.

So after considering this, I'd still like to keep Everything netinst as the 
universal fallback if the flavored images have their optical boot broken.
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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Chris Murphy]

On Thu, Jan 12, 2017 at 1:11 PM, Chris Murphy  wrote:
>If you
> pick Server or Cloud Edition using Everything netinstall, you get ext4
> on LVM with a massive /home volume rather unsuitable for servers, and
> no free space in the VG for docker-storage-setup to configure for
> itself. Everything netinstall's partitioning is the same as
> Workstation's.

That's wrong. Everything does something no other product does. It's
ext4 on LVM, with just root and swap LV's, with root taking up all the
space not reserved for swap. So...it'd work for Workstation and
Server, but it's not the WG intended layout where /home is separate
for Workstation, and for Server they want XFS and reserve space in the
VG for other purposes (separate /var possibly or space for
docker-storage-setup for containers). So I'd say while non-fatal, it's
also not ideal for any of the products and thus not worth blocking on.



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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Chris Murphy]

On Wed, Jan 11, 2017 at 6:44 AM, Kamil Paral  wrote:

> One solution here is to make Everything netinst release blocking. There is a 
> good use case for that, it's the most universal install medium we have (you 
> can install anything from it). A different solution is to mark e.g. Server 
> netinst as blocking for optical media, but that will cover only Server (so no 
> Workstation or KDE support in case optical boot is really broken).
>
> Thoughts?

The productimg is media specific and is what determines default
partitioning, not what product you pick in software selection. If you
pick Server or Cloud Edition using Everything netinstall, you get ext4
on LVM with a massive /home volume rather unsuitable for servers, and
no free space in the VG for docker-storage-setup to configure for
itself. Everything netinstall's partitioning is the same as
Workstation's.

I see the candidate options for optical installations as:
Workstation-Live ISO, Atomic host ISO, and Server dvd ISO. Those will
all be release blocking for Fedora 26. So the question to ask their
respective WG's is if the inability to optically boot is blocking. And
then I'd say skip the netinstalls for optical boot criteria entirely.


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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Adam Williamson]

On Wed, 2017-01-11 at 08:44 -0500, Kamil Paral wrote:
> > > > Idea #2: Do not block on optical media issues for Final release for
> > > > certain
> > > > flavors/image types (Server, netinst)
> > > > ~~~
> > 
> > The outcome seems to be we should block on Workstation Live and Everything
> > netinst. Stephen confirmed his "remote DVD drive" installation was not
> > affected by the firmware issue causing some optical disks failing to boot.
> > Also just testing one Live and one netinst should give us a high probability
> > to detect all such issues, because all the Live and DVD+netinst images are
> > created the same way. I'll again propose a criterion adjustment on the test
> > list.
> > 
> > Thanks everyone for providing valuable feedback.
> > 
> 
> Sigh, I found a minor setback. We agreed Everything netinst is the
> best candidate for release blocking as an optical medium, but today I
> found out Everything netinst is marked as *not* release blocking at
> all [1]. Which some somewhat funny, because I always considered it as
> such (and I think more of us did), and this is quite a surprise for
> me. And if we don't block on it, we can't obviously block on it when
> it's burned to a spinning disc.
> 
> One solution here is to make Everything netinst release blocking.
> There is a good use case for that, it's the most universal install
> medium we have (you can install anything from it). A different
> solution is to mark e.g. Server netinst as blocking for optical
> media, but that will cover only Server (so no Workstation or KDE
> support in case optical boot is really broken).
> 
> Thoughts?

+1 for that. I believe the sticking point before has been the question
of what team/WG/SIG/whatever is 'responsible' for the image, but that
seems a kind of overly-theoretical concern.
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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Kamil Paral]

> > > Idea #2: Do not block on optical media issues for Final release for
> > > certain
> > > flavors/image types (Server, netinst)
> > > ~~~
> 
> The outcome seems to be we should block on Workstation Live and Everything
> netinst. Stephen confirmed his "remote DVD drive" installation was not
> affected by the firmware issue causing some optical disks failing to boot.
> Also just testing one Live and one netinst should give us a high probability
> to detect all such issues, because all the Live and DVD+netinst images are
> created the same way. I'll again propose a criterion adjustment on the test
> list.
> 
> Thanks everyone for providing valuable feedback.
> 

Sigh, I found a minor setback. We agreed Everything netinst is the best 
candidate for release blocking as an optical medium, but today I found out 
Everything netinst is marked as *not* release blocking at all [1]. Which some 
somewhat funny, because I always considered it as such (and I think more of us 
did), and this is quite a surprise for me. And if we don't block on it, we 
can't obviously block on it when it's burned to a spinning disc.

One solution here is to make Everything netinst release blocking. There is a 
good use case for that, it's the most universal install medium we have (you can 
install anything from it). A different solution is to mark e.g. Server netinst 
as blocking for optical media, but that will cover only Server (so no 
Workstation or KDE support in case optical boot is really broken).

Thoughts?

[1] 
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_Program_Management/ReleaseBlocking/Fedora25#Other_Deliverables
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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Adam Williamson]

On Wed, 2017-01-04 at 09:50 -0500, Kamil Paral wrote:
> That is interesting. I poked Jan Sedlak and asked him to look whether
> we could mount some images as hdd devices in OpenQA, so that
> potential dd-related problems are discovered immediately.

We planned to do this at the time, just that no-one's got around to it
yet. https://phab.qa.fedoraproject.org/T789
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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Kamil Paral]

Let's close this up.

> > Idea #1: Do not block on optical media issues for Alpha and Beta releases
> > ~

Nobody argued against this since last time, so I'm going to propose criterion 
adjustment on the test list.

> > Idea #2: Do not block on optical media issues for Final release for certain
> > flavors/image types (Server, netinst)
> > ~~~

The outcome seems to be we should block on Workstation Live and Everything 
netinst. Stephen confirmed his "remote DVD drive" installation was not affected 
by the firmware issue causing some optical disks failing to boot. Also just 
testing one Live and one netinst should give us a high probability to detect 
all such issues, because all the Live and DVD+netinst images are created the 
same way. I'll again propose a criterion adjustment on the test list.

Thanks everyone for providing valuable feedback.
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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Kamil Paral]

> Qemu CD/DVD device and actual optical drives should have the same
> dependency. I know the example case [1] it was a BIOS bug that
> syslinux was able to work around with an update. We'd never find such
> a thing unless someone runs into it with affected hardware, which did
> happen and that's how it ended up getting fixed in the same release
> cycle.

If you're certain about this, that would be good news, because it would mean 
that limited bare-metal testing is not a big problem (generic problems would be 
detected by OpenQA). I believe it's still needed to do bare-metal testing at 
least with Final RC images, because the code paths are still different, and 
even if there was a specific firmware bug like in [1], we can still get "lucky" 
and hit it in our testing. But it also means we can limit our manual testing to 
just a single Live image, single netinst image, etc, and still trust the 
results reasonably well.

> Whereas a more recent problem, where both ISO file attached to a qemu
> cd/dvd device and also burned to an optical disk would work, but
> imaged using dd to a USB stick would not, was due to a missing
> boot.img/stage 1 bootloader. If that same ISO were attached with a
> qemu hard drive device instead, it too would fail. How the bootloader
> is located by the firmware differs depending on whether it's an
> optical device (El Torito provides the hint) or a disk drive, and a
> USB stick is treated as a disk drive.

That is interesting. I poked Jan Sedlak and asked him to look whether we could 
mount some images as hdd devices in OpenQA, so that potential dd-related 
problems are discovered immediately.

> 
> [1]
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1148087
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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Kamil Paral]

> The iDRAC/iLO/BMC/IMM mounting systems seems to work in the same way
> that the qemu uses the iso image to boot. Whatever causes 'real'
> hardware to fail in certain cases does not seem to affect the remote
> mounting systems or the qemu.
> 
> I have used the remote booting quite a lot and at least once with an
> image which wasn't supposed to work with a real DVD image. It worked
> fine in those cases.

This is great info, thanks a lot.
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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Chris Murphy]

On Mon, Dec 19, 2016 at 10:35 AM, Stephen John Smoogen  wrote:
> On 19 December 2016 at 10:36, John Florian  wrote:
>> On Fri, 2016-12-16 at 15:49 -0600, Pete Travis wrote:
>>
>> All the DRAC/iLO/BMC systems I play with these days mount a remote ISO and
>> present it as optical media. The feature is basically only used for
>> emergencies where regular networking won't do,
>>
>>
>> My co-workers use iDRAC installs for non-emergency cases. We need to ships
>> servers around the world and sometimes the import laws are such a PITA
>> that's easier to have the facility make the hardware purchase locally and
>> then said co-workers install Fedora remotely via the DRAC.
>
> The iDRAC/iLO/BMC/IMM mounting systems seems to work in the same way
> that the qemu uses the iso image to boot. Whatever causes 'real'
> hardware to fail in certain cases does not seem to affect the remote
> mounting systems or the qemu.

Qemu CD/DVD device and actual optical drives should have the same
dependency. I know the example case [1] it was a BIOS bug that
syslinux was able to work around with an update. We'd never find such
a thing unless someone runs into it with affected hardware, which did
happen and that's how it ended up getting fixed in the same release
cycle.

Whereas a more recent problem, where both ISO file attached to a qemu
cd/dvd device and also burned to an optical disk would work, but
imaged using dd to a USB stick would not, was due to a missing
boot.img/stage 1 bootloader. If that same ISO were attached with a
qemu hard drive device instead, it too would fail. How the bootloader
is located by the firmware differs depending on whether it's an
optical device (El Torito provides the hint) or a disk drive, and a
USB stick is treated as a disk drive.



[1]
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1148087


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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Stephen John Smoogen]

On 19 December 2016 at 10:36, John Florian  wrote:
> On Fri, 2016-12-16 at 15:49 -0600, Pete Travis wrote:
>
> All the DRAC/iLO/BMC systems I play with these days mount a remote ISO and
> present it as optical media. The feature is basically only used for
> emergencies where regular networking won't do,
>
>
> My co-workers use iDRAC installs for non-emergency cases. We need to ships
> servers around the world and sometimes the import laws are such a PITA
> that's easier to have the facility make the hardware purchase locally and
> then said co-workers install Fedora remotely via the DRAC.

The iDRAC/iLO/BMC/IMM mounting systems seems to work in the same way
that the qemu uses the iso image to boot. Whatever causes 'real'
hardware to fail in certain cases does not seem to affect the remote
mounting systems or the qemu.

I have used the remote booting quite a lot and at least once with an
image which wasn't supposed to work with a real DVD image. It worked
fine in those cases. [The usual big problem is uploading howmany
gigabyes over a DSL or cable modem to remote server in Germany versus
the image]

> I've not done it myself so I cannot speak at all as to how various media
> types work or fail, but just thought I'd mention that this type of scenario
> is very real, albeit admittedly much less common.
>
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>



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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Neal Gompa]

On Sat, Dec 17, 2016 at 6:22 AM, Kamil Paral  wrote:
>> All the DRAC/iLO/BMC systems I play with these days mount a remote ISO and
>> present it as optical media. The feature is basically only used for
>> emergencies where regular networking won't do, like when I want the normal
>> network environment for the process and don't want to bother the network
>> folks to change routing and vlans in realtime.
>
>> Definitely an edge case, but I'm fairly sure that an image that won't boot
>> from physical optical media also will not boot this way. It would be more
>> important for RHEL users than Fedora users, I assume.
>
>> --Pete
>
>
> Thanks for clarification. Just to be absolutely clear, this proposal doesn't 
> affect RHEL release process in any way. This would be Fedora-only change. And 
> it is a good remark that users of such systems are probably more likely to be 
> installing RHEL/CentOS than Fedora due to a longer support period.

You'd be surprised. Given how much easier it has gotten to upgrade
Fedora systems, and some people (like myself) prefer to have new
software for various purposes and keep up to date with upstreams for
security purposes, I would be very surprised if there weren't more
Fedora servers being rolled out. Stuff like configuration management
has made things much easier in that regard, too.


On Mon, Dec 19, 2016 at 10:36 AM, John Florian  wrote:
> On Fri, 2016-12-16 at 15:49 -0600, Pete Travis wrote:
>
> All the DRAC/iLO/BMC systems I play with these days mount a remote ISO and
> present it as optical media. The feature is basically only used for
> emergencies where regular networking won't do,
>
>
> My co-workers use iDRAC installs for non-emergency cases. We need to ships
> servers around the world and sometimes the import laws are such a PITA
> that's easier to have the facility make the hardware purchase locally and
> then said co-workers install Fedora remotely via the DRAC.
>
> I've not done it myself so I cannot speak at all as to how various media
> types work or fail, but just thought I'd mention that this type of scenario
> is very real, albeit admittedly much less common.

Indeed. There's also the matter of bandwidth availability. In my case,
we're not afflicted by import laws quite like that, but our internal
datacenter bandwidth is so much better than the local internet
connection that it's just easier to install remotely. And in some
cases, we don't have local hands that could do the install anyway...

-- 
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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[John Florian]

On Fri, 2016-12-16 at 15:49 -0600, Pete Travis wrote:
All the DRAC/iLO/BMC systems I play with these days mount a remote ISO and 
present it as optical media. The feature is basically only used for emergencies 
where regular networking won't do,

My co-workers use iDRAC installs for non-emergency cases. We need to ships 
servers around the world and sometimes the import laws are such a PITA that's 
easier to have the facility make the hardware purchase locally and then said 
co-workers install Fedora remotely via the DRAC.

I've not done it myself so I cannot speak at all as to how various media types 
work or fail, but just thought I'd mention that this type of scenario is very 
real, albeit admittedly much less common.
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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Adam Williamson]

On Fri, 2016-12-16 at 15:49 -0600, Pete Travis wrote:
> All the DRAC/iLO/BMC systems I play with these days mount a remote ISO and
> present it as optical media. The feature is basically only used for
> emergencies where regular networking won't do, like when I want the normal
> network environment for the process and don't want to bother the network
> folks to change routing and vlans in realtime.
> 
> Definitely an edge case, but I'm fairly sure that an image that won't boot
> from physical optical media also will not boot this way.

I suspect this is not necessarily the case. We've had a real bug in the
past where the ISO images would boot when attached to virtual machines
as virtual optical media, but would fail to boot on many/most systems
when actually written to a physical optical disc. I have no idea which
side of that split this system falls on, but it seems at least
plausible that it would act more like the 'virtual disc' case than the
'physical disc' case...
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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Kamil Paral]

> All the DRAC/iLO/BMC systems I play with these days mount a remote ISO and
> present it as optical media. The feature is basically only used for
> emergencies where regular networking won't do, like when I want the normal
> network environment for the process and don't want to bother the network
> folks to change routing and vlans in realtime.

> Definitely an edge case, but I'm fairly sure that an image that won't boot
> from physical optical media also will not boot this way. It would be more
> important for RHEL users than Fedora users, I assume.

> --Pete


Thanks for clarification. Just to be absolutely clear, this proposal doesn't 
affect RHEL release process in any way. This would be Fedora-only change. And 
it is a good remark that users of such systems are probably more likely to be 
installing RHEL/CentOS than Fedora due to a longer support period.
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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Kamil Paral]

> I prefer to install from DVD. By far. And it's always nice to give away DVDs
> to classmates or colleagues, or in release parties, FAD, etc.
> My thoughts.
> Cheers,
> Sylvia

If you're talking about Workstation Live, then you shouldn't be affected. Or 
are you talking about a different flavor?
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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Ms Sanchez]

On 15/12/16 15:14, Keith Keith wrote:



>We haven't received as much feedback as I hoped for. Maybe people 
don't care enough about optical disks to even respond, or it might be 
a different reason.


I must have missed this and deleted it by mistake.

I had something weird happen when F23 was the latest release. Somehow, 
probably through user error, I deleted my partition table and bricked 
my only USB stick.  I think I corrupted the USB stick firmware 
somehow.  I have only one computer so using another to get another 
copy wasn't an option.  I did have a back up Fedora DVD because an 
earlier experience in life when I found myself without an OS and a 
broken installation.


I think that having a read only media option with physical damage as 
the only failure mode is valuable.  I continue to keep a Fedora DVD 
even though I prefer installing through USB.






I prefer to install from DVD. By far.  And it's always nice to give away 
DVDs to classmates or colleagues, or in release parties, FAD, etc.

My thoughts.


Cheers,
Sylvia




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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Pete Travis]

On Dec 15, 2016 08:09, "Matthew Miller"  wrote:

On Thu, Dec 15, 2016 at 07:31:29AM -0500, Neal Gompa wrote:
> > This is interesting. Does IPMI also allow you boot from a "remote
> > USB device"?
> Not any of the servers I've worked with. Only remote DVD boot. I've
> never heard of anyone being able to do remote USB or disk device, as I
> think the ability to write over the network is considered not
> desirable...

IBM Bladecenters can mount USB images remotely — although that's just a
disk image file, same as you can do with an .ISO. No physical media
involved in either case.


--
Matthew Miller

Fedora Project Leader



All the DRAC/iLO/BMC systems I play with these days mount a remote ISO and
present it as optical media. The feature is basically only used for
emergencies where regular networking won't do, like when I want the normal
network environment for the process and don't want to bother the network
folks to change routing and vlans in realtime.

Definitely an edge case, but I'm fairly sure that an image that won't boot
from physical optical media also will not boot this way.  It would be more
important for RHEL users than Fedora users, I assume.

--Pete
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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Kevin Kofler]

Matthew Miller wrote:
> Note "nobody argued for". A close corollary is: "Nobody said: hey, I
> depend on physical KDE optical media, so I promise to test it for each
> Fedora Alpha, Beta, and release."

That's because of the previous step of making Fedora KDE a second-class 
citizen, the discontinuation of pressed KDE live media.

I really don't see why we cannot go back to doing multi-desktop pressed 
media. As I understand it, they cost the same as or only marginally more 
(small surcharge for dual-layer) than Workstation-only, they offer the exact 
same Workstation experience, but they also give the user the other options.

That, or finally give up on pressing DVDs entirely (where EMEA has now said 
for 1 or 2 releases that they'd stop doing DVDs in the next release, but 
then ended up producing more Workstation DVDs each time). If you think 
people will want DVDs, then do them right (multi-desktop), if you think they 
won't, then don't do them.

Kevin Kofler
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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Ralf Corsepius]

On 12/16/2016 04:04 PM, Matthew Miller wrote:

On Fri, Dec 16, 2016 at 06:32:36AM +0100, Kevin Kofler wrote:

- Nobody argued for KDE Live. We probably don't bulk press KDE Live DVDs.
If we cover Workstation Live, it's improbable that only KDE Live would
break, but not impossible. If such thing happens, are people OK with
releasing Fedora XX KDE Live only bootable over USB?


Yet another step towards making Fedora KDE a second-class citizen. :-(


Note "nobody argued for". A close corollary is: "Nobody said: hey, I
depend on physical KDE optical media, so I promise to test it for each
Fedora Alpha, Beta, and release."


What you say only confirms Kevin.



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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Matthew Miller]

On Fri, Dec 16, 2016 at 06:32:36AM +0100, Kevin Kofler wrote:
> > - Nobody argued for KDE Live. We probably don't bulk press KDE Live DVDs.
> > If we cover Workstation Live, it's improbable that only KDE Live would
> > break, but not impossible. If such thing happens, are people OK with
> > releasing Fedora XX KDE Live only bootable over USB?
> 
> Yet another step towards making Fedora KDE a second-class citizen. :-(

Note "nobody argued for". A close corollary is: "Nobody said: hey, I
depend on physical KDE optical media, so I promise to test it for each
Fedora Alpha, Beta, and release."

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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Kamil Paral]

> I mean this bug[1] that became a thing ever since we split up the
> kernel into lots of subpackages. Anaconda/DNF will install the wrong
> variant (like debug instead of regular) of any kernel subpackage
> because they all provide (and rightfully so) the same name. It breaks
> stuff as simple as having Wi-Fi in Fedora Workstation after
> netinstall, 

If you can provide a simple reproducer for some essential part of 
GNOME/KDE/Server breaking (like wifi) when installing from netinst, we can 
propose it as a release blocker for Fedora 26. The bigger impact, and the 
larger audience affected, the better. Maybe start a new thread for this, so 
that we don't go too off topic here, thanks.
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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Kamil Paral]

> On December 15, 2016 9:32:36 PM PST, Kevin Kofler 
> wrote:
> >Kamil Paral wrote:
> >> - Nobody argued for KDE Live. We probably don't bulk press KDE Live
> >DVDs.
> >> If we cover Workstation Live, it's improbable that only KDE Live
> >would
> >> break, but not impossible. If such thing happens, are people OK with
> >> releasing Fedora XX KDE Live only bootable over USB?
> >
> >Yet another step towards making Fedora KDE a second-class citizen. :-(
> >
> >Either we continue supporting DVD media for all spins/editions or for
> >none.

Why all-or-nothing approach? My original proposal talks about 'all' being quite 
time consuming and probably losing the "worth the time" ratio quickly. But 
isn't "something" better than "nothing"? That's exactly what we're talking 
about here - having a set of "guaranteed to be working" media, ideally those 
generic enough to be widely usable (KDE can be installed from netinst, even if 
KDE Live doesn't boot from a spinning disc), or those mostly used in this 
scenario (that would be Workstation Live).

> >
> >Kevin Kofler
> >___
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> 
> I don't see why we can't just say the requirement is that we test "at least
> one release blocking live image". I can't see any reason we have to specify
> which one we test.

Which images we test and how often is an internal QA process that we can decide 
ourselves according to our resources. But I'm trying to figure out here on 
which images we *block*. "At least one Live image" is probably something people 
wouldn't like if KDE turned out to be working and Workstation not (in terms of 
optical boot). And I don't want to belittle KDE here, but Workstation is the 
main face of Fedora (at least by looking at getfedora.org, and reading the 
reviews).
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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Adam Williamson]

On December 15, 2016 9:32:36 PM PST, Kevin Kofler  
wrote:
>Kamil Paral wrote:
>> - Nobody argued for KDE Live. We probably don't bulk press KDE Live
>DVDs.
>> If we cover Workstation Live, it's improbable that only KDE Live
>would
>> break, but not impossible. If such thing happens, are people OK with
>> releasing Fedora XX KDE Live only bootable over USB?
>
>Yet another step towards making Fedora KDE a second-class citizen. :-(
>
>Either we continue supporting DVD media for all spins/editions or for
>none.
>
>Kevin Kofler
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I don't see why we can't just say the requirement is that we test "at least one 
release blocking live image". I can't see any reason we have to specify which 
one we test.
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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Kevin Kofler]

Kamil Paral wrote:
> - Nobody argued for KDE Live. We probably don't bulk press KDE Live DVDs.
> If we cover Workstation Live, it's improbable that only KDE Live would
> break, but not impossible. If such thing happens, are people OK with
> releasing Fedora XX KDE Live only bootable over USB?

Yet another step towards making Fedora KDE a second-class citizen. :-(

Either we continue supporting DVD media for all spins/editions or for none.

Kevin Kofler
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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Adam Williamson]

On Thu, 2016-12-15 at 14:04 -0600, Chris Adams wrote:
> Once upon a time, Adam Williamson  said:
> > On Thu, 2016-12-15 at 14:37 -0500, Neal Gompa wrote:
> > > It is essentially the same core issue, yes. It can happen with Yum,
> > > but for some reason, it happens less often.
> > 
> > yum had rather different logic for resolving ambiguous dependencies
> > than libsolv does.
> 
> Is the current behavior documented?  IIRC yum used the shortest package
> name, and then an alphabetic sort.  For the particular case of the
> kernel vs. kernel-debug packages, shortest package name would solve the
> issue.

I don't think it is, no. You could possibly find it with the clue that
it changed substantially between 0.6.13 and 0.6.14 (see
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1192182 ). I've looked at
it before, but don't remember where it is any more. The libsolv repo is
https://github.com/openSUSE/libsolv .
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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Chris Adams]

Once upon a time, Adam Williamson  said:
> On Thu, 2016-12-15 at 14:37 -0500, Neal Gompa wrote:
> > It is essentially the same core issue, yes. It can happen with Yum,
> > but for some reason, it happens less often.
> 
> yum had rather different logic for resolving ambiguous dependencies
> than libsolv does.

Is the current behavior documented?  IIRC yum used the shortest package
name, and then an alphabetic sort.  For the particular case of the
kernel vs. kernel-debug packages, shortest package name would solve the
issue.

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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Adam Williamson]

On Thu, 2016-12-15 at 14:37 -0500, Neal Gompa wrote:
> It is essentially the same core issue, yes. It can happen with Yum,
> but for some reason, it happens less often.

yum had rather different logic for resolving ambiguous dependencies
than libsolv does.
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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Neal Gompa]

On Thu, Dec 15, 2016 at 1:49 PM, Adam Williamson
 wrote:
> On Thu, 2016-12-15 at 13:22 -0500, Neal Gompa wrote:
>> On Thu, Dec 15, 2016 at 1:03 PM, Adam Williamson
>>  wrote:
>> > On Thu, 2016-12-15 at 07:31 -0500, Neal Gompa wrote:
>> > > and even if it
>> > > did, that would likely be the equivalent of a netinstall, and
>> > > netinstalls are broken until someone does something about how kernel
>> > > package flavors are selected and installed.
>> >
>> > Sorry, what do you mean by this? And how is it different on DVDs?
>>
>> I mean this bug[1] that became a thing ever since we split up the
>> kernel into lots of subpackages. Anaconda/DNF will install the wrong
>> variant (like debug instead of regular) of any kernel subpackage
>> because they all provide (and rightfully so) the same name. It breaks
>> stuff as simple as having Wi-Fi in Fedora Workstation after
>> netinstall, or makes it so that you can't rely on the "kernel-devel"
>> requirement for dkms. It's a natural consequence of how our kernel
>> packaging works, and how yum and dnf cannot infer the correct default
>> flavor of kernel packages from the environment.
>
> Oh, right, that one. Isn't it basically the same as
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1192189 ?
>

It is essentially the same core issue, yes. It can happen with Yum,
but for some reason, it happens less often.

>> I haven't installed from the DVD in a while, but last I recall,
>> something about DVD installs prevents this from happening. It may very
>> well occur now with DVD installs, too.
>
> The difference would just be in which of the kernel packages are
> present on the DVD for it to install, I suppose.

Most likely.


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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Adam Williamson]

On Thu, 2016-12-15 at 13:22 -0500, Neal Gompa wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 15, 2016 at 1:03 PM, Adam Williamson
>  wrote:
> > On Thu, 2016-12-15 at 07:31 -0500, Neal Gompa wrote:
> > > and even if it
> > > did, that would likely be the equivalent of a netinstall, and
> > > netinstalls are broken until someone does something about how kernel
> > > package flavors are selected and installed.
> > 
> > Sorry, what do you mean by this? And how is it different on DVDs?
> 
> I mean this bug[1] that became a thing ever since we split up the
> kernel into lots of subpackages. Anaconda/DNF will install the wrong
> variant (like debug instead of regular) of any kernel subpackage
> because they all provide (and rightfully so) the same name. It breaks
> stuff as simple as having Wi-Fi in Fedora Workstation after
> netinstall, or makes it so that you can't rely on the "kernel-devel"
> requirement for dkms. It's a natural consequence of how our kernel
> packaging works, and how yum and dnf cannot infer the correct default
> flavor of kernel packages from the environment.

Oh, right, that one. Isn't it basically the same as
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1192189 ?

> I haven't installed from the DVD in a while, but last I recall,
> something about DVD installs prevents this from happening. It may very
> well occur now with DVD installs, too.

The difference would just be in which of the kernel packages are
present on the DVD for it to install, I suppose.
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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Neal Gompa]

On Thu, Dec 15, 2016 at 1:03 PM, Adam Williamson
 wrote:
> On Thu, 2016-12-15 at 07:31 -0500, Neal Gompa wrote:
>> and even if it
>> did, that would likely be the equivalent of a netinstall, and
>> netinstalls are broken until someone does something about how kernel
>> package flavors are selected and installed.
>
> Sorry, what do you mean by this? And how is it different on DVDs?

I mean this bug[1] that became a thing ever since we split up the
kernel into lots of subpackages. Anaconda/DNF will install the wrong
variant (like debug instead of regular) of any kernel subpackage
because they all provide (and rightfully so) the same name. It breaks
stuff as simple as having Wi-Fi in Fedora Workstation after
netinstall, or makes it so that you can't rely on the "kernel-devel"
requirement for dkms. It's a natural consequence of how our kernel
packaging works, and how yum and dnf cannot infer the correct default
flavor of kernel packages from the environment.

I haven't installed from the DVD in a while, but last I recall,
something about DVD installs prevents this from happening. It may very
well occur now with DVD installs, too.

[1]: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1228897


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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Adam Williamson]

On Thu, 2016-12-15 at 07:31 -0500, Neal Gompa wrote:
> and even if it
> did, that would likely be the equivalent of a netinstall, and
> netinstalls are broken until someone does something about how kernel
> package flavors are selected and installed.

Sorry, what do you mean by this? And how is it different on DVDs?
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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Kamil Paral]

> I had something weird happen when F23 was the latest release. Somehow,
> probably through user error, I deleted my partition table and bricked my
> only USB stick. I think I corrupted the USB stick firmware somehow. I have
> only one computer so using another to get another copy wasn't an option. I
> did have a back up Fedora DVD because an earlier experience in life when I
> found myself without an OS and a broken installation.

> I think that having a read only media option with physical damage as the only
> failure mode is valuable. I continue to keep a Fedora DVD even though I
> prefer installing through USB.

If you keep Workstation Live or Server netinst, you should be still covered 
under the current proposal. That doesn't mean other media won't work as 
spinning discs, just won't be guaranteed to work.
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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Keith Keith]

On Thu, Dec 15, 2016 at 6:08 AM, Kamil Paral  wrote:

> > Now that Fedora 25 is out of the door, I'd like to start a discussion
> about
> > the future of officially-supported (meaning rigorously tested) optical
> media
> > for future Fedora releases.
>
> The discussion died off, so let me summarize and propose a plan.
>
> We haven't received as much feedback as I hoped for. Maybe people don't
> care enough about optical disks to even respond, or it might be a different
> reason. But we also didn't receive as much negative feedback as I feared.
> So hopefully this does not negatively impact too many people. The comments
> under the Phoronix article [1] weren't too helpful either, a few rants but
> no-one cared to follow up with some explanation or system specification
> which would be negatively affected for his/her use case. Some of them, I
> believe, just read the article title without realizing this only affects
> Alpha/Beta media or certain flavors of Final media.
>
> [1] http://phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item=Fedora-Post-
> 25-Optical-Future
>
>
> > Idea #1: Do not block on optical media issues for Alpha and Beta releases
> > 
> ~
>
> This is the less controversial idea, I believe. We received a concern from
> Matthew, who was worried that we might find out too late if we don't check
> it for Alpha/Beta. I partly agree, but believe we should solve it with an
> improved QA processes, instead of bumping the release criteria to apply
> earlier. He did not object to this, and nobody else did, so I assume
> everyone agrees :-) If there are no further concerns, I'll prepare a
> criterion adjustment proposal for this.
>
> >
> > Idea #2: Do not block on optical media issues for Final release for
> certain
> > flavors/image types (Server, netinst)
> > 
> ~
> >
> > This is a bolder variant of the previous idea and can be done separately
> or
> > combined with it. It makes optical media functionality not guaranteed
> even
> > for Final release, but just for certain Fedora flavors or image types for
> > which it makes sense (not all of them). Which images to cover, that's the
> > heart of the discussion. If you look into our test matrix again, we
> > currently block on 6 of them:
> > * Workstation Live + netinst
> > * KDE Live
> > * Server DVD + netinst
> > * Everything netinst
>
> This was received with reasonably positive reception as well. But it's
> harder to compile a list which images should be covered by criteria and
> which not.
> - Workstation Live will be covered, that's clear - we give out these DVDs
> at events, it's sent out to the developing world
> - Everything netinst is the most universal and generic netinst, so
> covering that one means we don't need to cover Workstation netinst and
> Server netinst. People seem to agree to this.
> - Nobody argued for KDE Live. We probably don't bulk press KDE Live DVDs.
> If we cover Workstation Live, it's improbable that only KDE Live would
> break, but not impossible. If such thing happens, are people OK with
> releasing Fedora XX KDE Live only bootable over USB?
> - Server DVD is a mixed bag. Matthew didn't include it in his block-list,
> Adam did. Neal uses it over IMPI (but netinst would be good enough for him
> IIUIC, sans some package deps issue which can be solved using a kickstart).
> I would appreciate more feedback from Server folks. Again, we'll cover
> netinst so it's improbable DVD would break, but not impossible. Are people
> OK releasing it only bootable over USB (and PXE)?
>
> Thanks.
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>We haven't received as much feedback as I hoped for. Maybe people don't
care enough about optical disks to even respond, or it might be a different
reason.

I must have missed this and deleted it by mistake.

I had something weird happen when F23 was the latest release.  Somehow,
probably through user error, I deleted my partition table and bricked my
only USB stick.  I think I corrupted the USB stick firmware somehow.  I
have only one computer so using another to get another copy wasn't an
option.  I did have a back up Fedora DVD because an earlier experience in
life when I found myself without an OS and a broken installation.

I think that having a read only media option with physical damage as the
only failure mode is valuable.  I continue to keep a Fedora DVD even though
I prefer installing through USB.
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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Matthew Miller]

On Thu, Dec 15, 2016 at 07:31:29AM -0500, Neal Gompa wrote:
> > This is interesting. Does IPMI also allow you boot from a "remote
> > USB device"?
> Not any of the servers I've worked with. Only remote DVD boot. I've
> never heard of anyone being able to do remote USB or disk device, as I
> think the ability to write over the network is considered not
> desirable...

IBM Bladecenters can mount USB images remotely — although that's just a
disk image file, same as you can do with an .ISO. No physical media
involved in either case.


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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Matthew Miller]

On Thu, Dec 15, 2016 at 07:08:13AM -0500, Kamil Paral wrote:
> > Idea #1: Do not block on optical media issues for Alpha and Beta releases
> > ~
> This is the less controversial idea, I believe. We received a concern
> from Matthew, who was worried that we might find out too late if we
> don't check it for Alpha/Beta. I partly agree, but believe we should
> solve it with an improved QA processes, instead of bumping the
> release criteria to apply earlier. He did not object to this, and
> nobody else did, so I assume everyone agrees :-) If there are no
> further concerns, I'll prepare a criterion adjustment proposal for
> this.

+1

> This was received with reasonably positive reception as well. But
> it's harder to compile a list which images should be covered by
> criteria and which not.
> - Workstation Live will be covered, that's clear - we give out these
>   DVDs at events, it's sent out to the developing world
> - Everything netinst is the most universal and generic netinst, so
>   covering that one means we don't need to cover Workstation netinst
>   and Server netinst. People seem to agree to this.

+1

> - Nobody argued for KDE Live. We probably don't bulk press KDE Live
>   DVDs. If we cover Workstation Live, it's improbable that only KDE
>   Live would break, but not impossible. If such thing happens, are
>   people OK with releasing Fedora XX KDE Live only bootable over USB?

I continue to believe we need the ability to release Spins independent
of the main release cycle. If there's a KDE-specific problem, rather
than that holding up the release *or* waiting six to eight months for
it to work again, there should be the ability to have it fixed a week
later. Or for that matter, if Workstation slips a month and KDE doesn't
want to, should be fine.

I know that we're not there yet, but I'll keep repeating it as a
desired state. :)

> - Server DVD is a mixed bag. Matthew didn't include it in his
>   block-list, Adam did. Neal uses it over IMPI (but netinst would be
>   good enough for him IIUIC, sans some package deps issue which can
>   be solved using a kickstart). I would appreciate more feedback from
>   Server folks. Again, we'll cover netinst so it's improbable DVD
>   would break, but not impossible. Are people OK releasing it only
>   bootable over USB (and PXE)?

I think netinst + USB covers the Server case well enough.


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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Neal Gompa]

On Mon, Dec 12, 2016 at 8:22 AM, Kamil Paral  wrote:
>> Admittedly, I have not gone through the whole thread, but I'd like to
>> point out that I *do* use the DVD and netinstall ISOs for optical
>> media boot on real hardware, though in a somewhat indirect manner.
>> Many of the servers I use have IPMI, which allows me to have it boot a
>> remote DVD device with an ISO or a real DVD drive. Due to certain
>
> This is interesting. Does IPMI also allow you boot from a "remote USB device"?
>

Not any of the servers I've worked with. Only remote DVD boot. I've
never heard of anyone being able to do remote USB or disk device, as I
think the ability to write over the network is considered not
desirable...

>> bugs[1], I've increasingly relied on the DVD vs netinstall. From the
>> system's perspective, it's a regular DVD startup, just like with VMs.
>
> Well, unfortunately DVD boot on bare metal is different from DVD boot in VMs. 
> The former is proposed to be less tested, the latter would remain fully 
> tested. The question is what form of boot IPMI uses, and that information is 
> probably difficult to find out.
>
> I wonder, why do you prefer remote DVD boot over something like PXE boot, 
> boot.fedoraproject.org or booting the iso directly from grub?

The environment I'm working in doesn't allow us to have a PXE boot
server. boot.fedoraproject.org doesn't seem to work, and even if it
did, that would likely be the equivalent of a netinstall, and
netinstalls are broken until someone does something about how kernel
package flavors are selected and installed. Booting the iso from grub
implies I have something to boot from first (I usually don't), and
also setting up grub is a non-trivial task for this stuff.



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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Kamil Paral]

> Now that Fedora 25 is out of the door, I'd like to start a discussion about
> the future of officially-supported (meaning rigorously tested) optical media
> for future Fedora releases.

The discussion died off, so let me summarize and propose a plan. 

We haven't received as much feedback as I hoped for. Maybe people don't care 
enough about optical disks to even respond, or it might be a different reason. 
But we also didn't receive as much negative feedback as I feared. So hopefully 
this does not negatively impact too many people. The comments under the 
Phoronix article [1] weren't too helpful either, a few rants but no-one cared 
to follow up with some explanation or system specification which would be 
negatively affected for his/her use case. Some of them, I believe, just read 
the article title without realizing this only affects Alpha/Beta media or 
certain flavors of Final media.

[1] http://phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item=Fedora-Post-25-Optical-Future


> Idea #1: Do not block on optical media issues for Alpha and Beta releases
> ~

This is the less controversial idea, I believe. We received a concern from 
Matthew, who was worried that we might find out too late if we don't check it 
for Alpha/Beta. I partly agree, but believe we should solve it with an improved 
QA processes, instead of bumping the release criteria to apply earlier. He did 
not object to this, and nobody else did, so I assume everyone agrees :-) If 
there are no further concerns, I'll prepare a criterion adjustment proposal for 
this.

> 
> Idea #2: Do not block on optical media issues for Final release for certain
> flavors/image types (Server, netinst)
> ~
> 
> This is a bolder variant of the previous idea and can be done separately or
> combined with it. It makes optical media functionality not guaranteed even
> for Final release, but just for certain Fedora flavors or image types for
> which it makes sense (not all of them). Which images to cover, that's the
> heart of the discussion. If you look into our test matrix again, we
> currently block on 6 of them:
> * Workstation Live + netinst
> * KDE Live
> * Server DVD + netinst
> * Everything netinst

This was received with reasonably positive reception as well. But it's harder 
to compile a list which images should be covered by criteria and which not.
- Workstation Live will be covered, that's clear - we give out these DVDs at 
events, it's sent out to the developing world
- Everything netinst is the most universal and generic netinst, so covering 
that one means we don't need to cover Workstation netinst and Server netinst. 
People seem to agree to this.
- Nobody argued for KDE Live. We probably don't bulk press KDE Live DVDs. If we 
cover Workstation Live, it's improbable that only KDE Live would break, but not 
impossible. If such thing happens, are people OK with releasing Fedora XX KDE 
Live only bootable over USB?
- Server DVD is a mixed bag. Matthew didn't include it in his block-list, Adam 
did. Neal uses it over IMPI (but netinst would be good enough for him IIUIC, 
sans some package deps issue which can be solved using a kickstart). I would 
appreciate more feedback from Server folks. Again, we'll cover netinst so it's 
improbable DVD would break, but not impossible. Are people OK releasing it only 
bootable over USB (and PXE)?

Thanks.
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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Chris Murphy]

On Mon, Dec 12, 2016 at 3:35 AM, Ms Sanchez  wrote:

> No, impossible, now it's read only.

This is one way flash drives die. It could also be a firmware bug. But
in any case it's not due to writing Fedora installation media or we'd
have a thousand complaints like this if it were happening even 1% of
the time.

> I tried to format but there's problem
> with block sizes. If I try to format Gparted shows a warning  "Block sizes
> are of xx bytes but Linux says they are xx bytes"  and fails.

This is an expected side effect of the unusual partitioning being used
for ISOs. ISO 9660 defines a block size of 2048 bytes, where the USB
stick is 512 bytes, and sometimes the disconnect causes confusion.
Wiping the first 1M should fix it, or use the feature in FMW for this
purpose.

>  For some
> reason, Media Writer failed middle way in the process of making it bootable.

*shrug* without kernel messages it's kinda hard to say what went wrong
but in the absence of evidence I'll blame bad or dying media just
because it's so common.


> And it's not the first time it happens.  The previous one I fixed it running
> a programme, but I don't remember which one.
> So, I know it's not physically destroyed but to me it's almost the same, I
> lost the only USB stick I had for this purpose. The other one is for
> backups.

Use the f3 package to see if it's fake flash. It's pretty common, as
are transient problems.

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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Kamil Paral]

> Admittedly, I have not gone through the whole thread, but I'd like to
> point out that I *do* use the DVD and netinstall ISOs for optical
> media boot on real hardware, though in a somewhat indirect manner.
> Many of the servers I use have IPMI, which allows me to have it boot a
> remote DVD device with an ISO or a real DVD drive. Due to certain

This is interesting. Does IPMI also allow you boot from a "remote USB device"?

> bugs[1], I've increasingly relied on the DVD vs netinstall. From the
> system's perspective, it's a regular DVD startup, just like with VMs.

Well, unfortunately DVD boot on bare metal is different from DVD boot in VMs. 
The former is proposed to be less tested, the latter would remain fully tested. 
The question is what form of boot IPMI uses, and that information is probably 
difficult to find out.

I wonder, why do you prefer remote DVD boot over something like PXE boot, 
boot.fedoraproject.org or booting the iso directly from grub?
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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Ms Sanchez]

On 11/12/16 19:21, Chris Murphy wrote:

On Sun, Dec 11, 2016 at 7:48 AM, Ms Sanchez  wrote:


On 07/12/16 15:05, Matthew Miller wrote:

On Wed, Dec 07, 2016 at 02:05:20PM +0100, Ralf Corsepius wrote:

It's still a good test to do.  For example, Server and netinst ISO
images are used a lot for VMs, but not for bare metal.

Well, your view - I have been using netinst-ISOs only, in recently years ;)

Do you burn them to actual physical spinning optical media?


I do that. Last time I tried to make a bootable USB I destroyed my pendrive
and it's not like a have them for tons.  And it's not the first time this
happens.

OK being an expert in hyperbole... I recognize this as such. There's
no way making a bootable USB stick destroys it. What you're probably
experiencing is confusing elsewhere as a result of the whacky hybrid
partition scheme that's used on Fedora ISOs. To clean it up you have
to wipe the first 3 sectors to remove all three partition schemes; but
you're maybe better off just zeroing the first 1MiB.

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ bs=1M count=1

The new Fedora Media Writer will recognize this hybrid partition
scheme on a USB stick and offer to reset it for you.





No, impossible, now it's read only. I tried to format but there's 
problem with block sizes. If I try to format Gparted shows a warning  
"Block sizes are of xx bytes but Linux says they are xx bytes"  and 
fails.  For some reason, Media Writer failed middle way in the process 
of making it bootable.  And it's not the first time it happens.  The 
previous one I fixed it running a programme, but I don't remember which 
one.
So, I know it's not physically destroyed but to me it's almost the same, 
I lost the only USB stick I had for this purpose. The other one is for 
backups.



Cheers,
Sylvia





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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Chris Murphy]

On Sun, Dec 11, 2016 at 7:48 AM, Ms Sanchez  wrote:
>
>
> On 07/12/16 15:05, Matthew Miller wrote:
>
> On Wed, Dec 07, 2016 at 02:05:20PM +0100, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
>
> It's still a good test to do.  For example, Server and netinst ISO
> images are used a lot for VMs, but not for bare metal.
>
> Well, your view - I have been using netinst-ISOs only, in recently years ;)
>
> Do you burn them to actual physical spinning optical media?
>
>
> I do that. Last time I tried to make a bootable USB I destroyed my pendrive
> and it's not like a have them for tons.  And it's not the first time this
> happens.

OK being an expert in hyperbole... I recognize this as such. There's
no way making a bootable USB stick destroys it. What you're probably
experiencing is confusing elsewhere as a result of the whacky hybrid
partition scheme that's used on Fedora ISOs. To clean it up you have
to wipe the first 3 sectors to remove all three partition schemes; but
you're maybe better off just zeroing the first 1MiB.

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ bs=1M count=1

The new Fedora Media Writer will recognize this hybrid partition
scheme on a USB stick and offer to reset it for you.



-- 
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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Ms Sanchez]

On 07/12/16 15:05, Matthew Miller wrote:

On Wed, Dec 07, 2016 at 02:05:20PM +0100, Ralf Corsepius wrote:

It's still a good test to do.  For example, Server and netinst ISO
images are used a lot for VMs, but not for bare metal.

Well, your view - I have been using netinst-ISOs only, in recently years ;)

Do you burn them to actual physical spinning optical media?



I do that. Last time I tried to make a bootable USB I destroyed my 
pendrive and it's not like a have them for tons.  And it's not the first 
time this happens.



Cheers,
Sylvia


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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Chris Murphy]

On Fri, Dec 9, 2016 at 5:31 PM, Mike Pinkerton  wrote:
>
> On 8 Dec 2016, at 11:22, Dennis Gilmore wrote:
>
>> On miércoles, 7 de diciembre de 2016 1:56:32 PM CST Mike Pinkerton wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> I use the Server netinstall image.  Use cases include loop mounting
>>> the netinstall .iso on boxes with Grub2 -- works on remote boxes
>>> where there is no physical access and can be easier than setting up a
>>> remote PXE solution -- and burning a CD for local boxes without Grub2.
>>
>> There is the pxe iso to use boot.fedoraproject.org that would probably
>> better
>> suit your purposes.
>
>
> How does that work on a remote box with no physical access, no DHCP and no
> console access?

How does netinstall work on that same box?

Bigger issue as I see it, is the lack of UEFI support for BFO. None of
my hardware has BIOS firmware.

>
>>> Does anyone maintain a up-to-date list of the content differences
>>> between the Server and Everything netinstall discs?  Is there any
>>> difference other than in default preferences?  Is there a way to do a
>>> single disc with a choice of "give me Server defaults" or "give me
>>> Everything defaults"?
>>
>>
>> The server netinst iso uses the server defaults, partitioning and
>> filesystem
>> selection. there is no way to do both with a single disk today. it would
>> require who knows what work, I imagine the work is possible its just not
>> an
>> option today.
>
>
> Aren't the server defaults just a matter of package selection?

Nope, it's part of the productimg file, which is what sets the default
package selection and also defines what is default partitioning. So
this is netinstall image specific.

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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Mike Pinkerton]

On 8 Dec 2016, at 11:22, Dennis Gilmore wrote:

On miércoles, 7 de diciembre de 2016 1:56:32 PM CST Mike Pinkerton  
wrote:


I use the Server netinstall image.  Use cases include loop mounting
the netinstall .iso on boxes with Grub2 -- works on remote boxes
where there is no physical access and can be easier than setting up a
remote PXE solution -- and burning a CD for local boxes without  
Grub2.
There is the pxe iso to use boot.fedoraproject.org that would  
probably better

suit your purposes.


How does that work on a remote box with no physical access, no DHCP  
and no console access?



Does anyone maintain a up-to-date list of the content differences
between the Server and Everything netinstall discs?  Is there any
difference other than in default preferences?  Is there a way to do a
single disc with a choice of "give me Server defaults" or "give me
Everything defaults"?


The server netinst iso uses the server defaults, partitioning and  
filesystem
selection. there is no way to do both with a single disk today. it  
would
require who knows what work, I imagine the work is possible its  
just not an

option today.


Aren't the server defaults just a matter of package selection?

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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Dennis Gilmore]

On jueves, 8 de diciembre de 2016 8:44:19 AM CST Thomas Gilliard wrote:
> On 12/08/2016 08:22 AM, Dennis Gilmore wrote:
> > On miércoles, 7 de diciembre de 2016 1:56:32 PM CST Mike Pinkerton wrote:
> >> On 6 Dec 2016, at 09:43, Kamil Paral wrote:

> > 
> > [1] https://boot.fedoraproject.org/
> > [1]this points to f25 server
> 
> This points to everything:
> http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/stage/25_RC-1.3/Everything/x86_64/iso/Fe
> dora-Everything-netinst-x86_64-25-1.3.iso
Where do you see that?  none of the download links on boot.fedoraproject.org I 
could find point to it.

Dennis

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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Neal Gompa]

On Thu, Dec 8, 2016 at 11:22 AM, Dennis Gilmore  wrote:
> On miércoles, 7 de diciembre de 2016 1:56:32 PM CST Mike Pinkerton wrote:
>> On 6 Dec 2016, at 09:43, Kamil Paral wrote:
>> > Which images to cover, that's the heart of the discussion. If you
>> > look into our test matrix again, we currently block on 6 of them:
>> > * Workstation Live + netinst
>> > * KDE Live
>> > * Server DVD + netinst
>> > * Everything netinst
>> >
>> > What comes first to my mind is Server (DVD + netinst). My guess is
>> > that people don't install Server from optical media, but rather
>> > from PXE or USB. I can't imagine installing Server boxes from DVDs.
>> > But I'd really like to hear from Server users how this is likely or
>> > not. Also, Server is most probably not given away at events. I
>> > don't know about sending Server DVDs to the developing world, we
>> > can make an inquiry about that.
>>
>> On 6 Dec 2016, at 12:20, Adam Williamson wrote:
>> > So an alternative to kparal's scheme would be to try and consider
>> > this,
>> > and say we test:
>> >
>> > * Workstation live
>> > * Everything netinst
>> > * Server DVD
>> >
>> > and consider those to be representative of the broad 'types' of
>> > ISOs in
>> > terms of the compose process. That way we don't have to test
>> > Workstation or Server netinsts, or the KDE live, on optical media.
>>
>> On 7 Dec 2016, at 09:13, Matthew Miller wrote:
>> > I think: Workstation x86_64 Live, and at least one netinstall image of
>> > any flavor (from which, in a pinch, anything else can be installed via
>> > kickstart).
>>
>> I use the Server netinstall image.  Use cases include loop mounting
>> the netinstall .iso on boxes with Grub2 -- works on remote boxes
>> where there is no physical access and can be easier than setting up a
>> remote PXE solution -- and burning a CD for local boxes without Grub2.
> There is the pxe iso to use boot.fedoraproject.org that would probably better
> suit your purposes.
>
>> I would be fine with dropping the Server DVD.
>>
>> Does anyone maintain a up-to-date list of the content differences
>> between the Server and Everything netinstall discs?  Is there any
>> difference other than in default preferences?  Is there a way to do a
>> single disc with a choice of "give me Server defaults" or "give me
>> Everything defaults"?
>
> The server netinst iso uses the server defaults, partitioning and filesystem
> selection. there is no way to do both with a single disk today. it would
> require who knows what work, I imagine the work is possible its just not an
> option today.  probably your best bet again is bfo[1]
>
> Dennis
>
> [1] https://boot.fedoraproject.org/

Admittedly, I have not gone through the whole thread, but I'd like to
point out that I *do* use the DVD and netinstall ISOs for optical
media boot on real hardware, though in a somewhat indirect manner.
Many of the servers I use have IPMI, which allows me to have it boot a
remote DVD device with an ISO or a real DVD drive. Due to certain
bugs[1], I've increasingly relied on the DVD vs netinstall. From the
system's perspective, it's a regular DVD startup, just like with VMs.

[1]: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1228897



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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Thomas Gilliard]

On 12/08/2016 08:22 AM, Dennis Gilmore wrote:

On miércoles, 7 de diciembre de 2016 1:56:32 PM CST Mike Pinkerton wrote:

On 6 Dec 2016, at 09:43, Kamil Paral wrote:

Which images to cover, that's the heart of the discussion. If you
look into our test matrix again, we currently block on 6 of them:
* Workstation Live + netinst
* KDE Live
* Server DVD + netinst
* Everything netinst

What comes first to my mind is Server (DVD + netinst). My guess is
that people don't install Server from optical media, but rather
from PXE or USB. I can't imagine installing Server boxes from DVDs.
But I'd really like to hear from Server users how this is likely or
not. Also, Server is most probably not given away at events. I
don't know about sending Server DVDs to the developing world, we
can make an inquiry about that.

On 6 Dec 2016, at 12:20, Adam Williamson wrote:

So an alternative to kparal's scheme would be to try and consider
this,
and say we test:

* Workstation live
* Everything netinst
* Server DVD

and consider those to be representative of the broad 'types' of
ISOs in
terms of the compose process. That way we don't have to test
Workstation or Server netinsts, or the KDE live, on optical media.

On 7 Dec 2016, at 09:13, Matthew Miller wrote:

I think: Workstation x86_64 Live, and at least one netinstall image of
any flavor (from which, in a pinch, anything else can be installed via
kickstart).

I use the Server netinstall image.  Use cases include loop mounting
the netinstall .iso on boxes with Grub2 -- works on remote boxes
where there is no physical access and can be easier than setting up a
remote PXE solution -- and burning a CD for local boxes without Grub2.

There is the pxe iso to use boot.fedoraproject.org that would probably better
suit your purposes.


I would be fine with dropping the Server DVD.

Does anyone maintain a up-to-date list of the content differences
between the Server and Everything netinstall discs?  Is there any
difference other than in default preferences?  Is there a way to do a
single disc with a choice of "give me Server defaults" or "give me
Everything defaults"?

The server netinst iso uses the server defaults, partitioning and filesystem
selection. there is no way to do both with a single disk today. it would
require who knows what work, I imagine the work is possible its just not an
option today.  probably your best bet again is bfo[1]

Dennis

[1] https://boot.fedoraproject.org/
[1]this points to f25 server

This points to everything:
http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/stage/25_RC-1.3/Everything/x86_64/iso/Fedora-Everything-netinst-x86_64-25-1.3.iso



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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Dennis Gilmore]

On miércoles, 7 de diciembre de 2016 1:56:32 PM CST Mike Pinkerton wrote:
> On 6 Dec 2016, at 09:43, Kamil Paral wrote:
> > Which images to cover, that's the heart of the discussion. If you
> > look into our test matrix again, we currently block on 6 of them:
> > * Workstation Live + netinst
> > * KDE Live
> > * Server DVD + netinst
> > * Everything netinst
> > 
> > What comes first to my mind is Server (DVD + netinst). My guess is
> > that people don't install Server from optical media, but rather
> > from PXE or USB. I can't imagine installing Server boxes from DVDs.
> > But I'd really like to hear from Server users how this is likely or
> > not. Also, Server is most probably not given away at events. I
> > don't know about sending Server DVDs to the developing world, we
> > can make an inquiry about that.
> 
> On 6 Dec 2016, at 12:20, Adam Williamson wrote:
> > So an alternative to kparal's scheme would be to try and consider
> > this,
> > and say we test:
> > 
> > * Workstation live
> > * Everything netinst
> > * Server DVD
> > 
> > and consider those to be representative of the broad 'types' of
> > ISOs in
> > terms of the compose process. That way we don't have to test
> > Workstation or Server netinsts, or the KDE live, on optical media.
> 
> On 7 Dec 2016, at 09:13, Matthew Miller wrote:
> > I think: Workstation x86_64 Live, and at least one netinstall image of
> > any flavor (from which, in a pinch, anything else can be installed via
> > kickstart).
> 
> I use the Server netinstall image.  Use cases include loop mounting
> the netinstall .iso on boxes with Grub2 -- works on remote boxes
> where there is no physical access and can be easier than setting up a
> remote PXE solution -- and burning a CD for local boxes without Grub2.
There is the pxe iso to use boot.fedoraproject.org that would probably better 
suit your purposes.

> I would be fine with dropping the Server DVD.
> 
> Does anyone maintain a up-to-date list of the content differences
> between the Server and Everything netinstall discs?  Is there any
> difference other than in default preferences?  Is there a way to do a
> single disc with a choice of "give me Server defaults" or "give me
> Everything defaults"?

The server netinst iso uses the server defaults, partitioning and filesystem 
selection. there is no way to do both with a single disk today. it would 
require who knows what work, I imagine the work is possible its just not an 
option today.  probably your best bet again is bfo[1]

Dennis

[1] https://boot.fedoraproject.org/

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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Adam Williamson]

On Wed, 2016-12-07 at 13:56 -0500, Mike Pinkerton wrote:
> I use the Server netinstall image.  Use cases include loop mounting  
> the netinstall .iso on boxes with Grub2 -- works on remote boxes  
> where there is no physical access and can be easier than setting up a  
> remote PXE solution -- and burning a CD for local boxes without Grub2.
> 
> I would be fine with dropping the Server DVD.

There is no proposal to *stop creating* any images here. We're only
talking about the extent of testing the ISO files written to physical
optical media in this thread.
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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Chris Murphy]

The "get it installed or rescued" use cases: The most universal image
for this is net install ISO, so one of those being the blocking image
to test on baremetal makes sense to me.

The "live + read only + verifiable" use cases: I'd say either
Workstation or Security spin could meet this use case. Since Security
spin is not a release blocking image, the criterion could say it's met
if either the Security spin or Workstation can boot UEFI and BIOS
computers using optical media. (Security spin benefits from all three
use cases.)


Chris Murphy
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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Mike Pinkerton]

On 6 Dec 2016, at 09:43, Kamil Paral wrote:

Which images to cover, that's the heart of the discussion. If you  
look into our test matrix again, we currently block on 6 of them:

* Workstation Live + netinst
* KDE Live
* Server DVD + netinst
* Everything netinst

What comes first to my mind is Server (DVD + netinst). My guess is  
that people don't install Server from optical media, but rather  
from PXE or USB. I can't imagine installing Server boxes from DVDs.  
But I'd really like to hear from Server users how this is likely or  
not. Also, Server is most probably not given away at events. I  
don't know about sending Server DVDs to the developing world, we  
can make an inquiry about that.



On 6 Dec 2016, at 12:20, Adam Williamson wrote:

So an alternative to kparal's scheme would be to try and consider  
this,

and say we test:

* Workstation live
* Everything netinst
* Server DVD

and consider those to be representative of the broad 'types' of  
ISOs in

terms of the compose process. That way we don't have to test
Workstation or Server netinsts, or the KDE live, on optical media.



On 7 Dec 2016, at 09:13, Matthew Miller wrote:


I think: Workstation x86_64 Live, and at least one netinstall image of
any flavor (from which, in a pinch, anything else can be installed via
kickstart).




I use the Server netinstall image.  Use cases include loop mounting  
the netinstall .iso on boxes with Grub2 -- works on remote boxes  
where there is no physical access and can be easier than setting up a  
remote PXE solution -- and burning a CD for local boxes without Grub2.


I would be fine with dropping the Server DVD.

Does anyone maintain a up-to-date list of the content differences  
between the Server and Everything netinstall discs?  Is there any  
difference other than in default preferences?  Is there a way to do a  
single disc with a choice of "give me Server defaults" or "give me  
Everything defaults"?


--
Mike

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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Adam Williamson]

On Wed, 2016-12-07 at 16:52 +0100, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> On 12/07/2016 04:14 PM, Matthew Miller wrote:
> > On Wed, Dec 07, 2016 at 03:54:25PM +0100, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> > > > Do you burn them to actual physical spinning optical media?
> > > 
> > > Nowadays, I usually put them on USB-sticks or SDCards. However I
> > > also have to admit having resorted to using optical media on very
> > > rare exceptional conditions.
> > 
> > Oh, good -- we're not talking about dropping the USB stick case (I
> > don't think we test SD cards at all)
> 
> In most cases, I am using these SD cards with one of these "USB 
> stick-like" adapters. So far, I've never had any boot/install related 
> problems with these. Probably, the BIOS/UEFI sees them as USB sticks?

Yes. To the system, an SD card in a USB adapter *is* a USB storage
device.
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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Adam Williamson]

On Wed, 2016-12-07 at 08:49 -0500, Kamil Paral wrote:
> I think there are two things combined. The first one is blocking
> status. I'd like to have blocking status set exactly for that
> milestone which we believe it should block (and not an earlier one,
> just in case). The second thing is detection. We should be able to
> detect these issues early in the process, but we often don't, and we
> can talk about improvements here. I usually strive to avoid the
> situation where we test a Final test case for the first time only
> after Beta release (or with Final RC1). That's too late.

Yeah, this is something I try to push every cycle. We do post repeated
reminders that *all* tests should be run on Alpha / Beta composes, not
only the tests for Alpha / Beta criteria.
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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Adam Williamson]

On Wed, 2016-12-07 at 11:15 +0100, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> 
> On 06/12/2016 18:11, Adam Williamson wrote:
> > On Tue, 2016-12-06 at 15:00 +, Marcin Juszkiewicz wrote:
> > > W dniu 06.12.2016 o 14:43, Kamil Paral pisze:
> > > 
> > > > All of that is, of course, motivated by trying to spend QA time more
> > > > effectively. You can see the current coverage e.g. in this table [2],
> > > > overall we burn 6 DVDs and perform 12 optical installation (BIOS +
> > > > UEFI) for every release candidate published. We allow non-complete
> > > > (yet still substantial) coverage for Alpha and Beta, but 100%
> > > > coverage for Final for each candidate compose. That is quite time
> > > > consuming, both burning and installation from optical media take a
> > > > long time, it requires bare metal testing, and we can't use the
> > > > machines for anything else during that time.
> > > 
> > > Why not boot VM with virtual optical drive? You can choose BIOS/UEFI,
> > > 32/64bit and do not require bare metal hardware for it.
> > 
> > It's not a sufficient test. We have had real bugs in the past where a
> > VM would boot from an ISO image, but real systems would not boot from
> > the same ISO image burned to a real optical disc.
> > 
> > Virtual machines are great for convenience, but they are not real
> > hardware and we cannot in good conscience release our product without
> > testing it on real machines with real media.
> 
> It's still a good test to do.  For example, Server and netinst ISO
> images are used a lot for VMs, but not for bare metal.

Of course we already test the ISOs on VMs, all the time.
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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Ralf Corsepius]

On 12/07/2016 04:14 PM, Matthew Miller wrote:

On Wed, Dec 07, 2016 at 03:54:25PM +0100, Ralf Corsepius wrote:

Do you burn them to actual physical spinning optical media?


Nowadays, I usually put them on USB-sticks or SDCards. However I
also have to admit having resorted to using optical media on very
rare exceptional conditions.


Oh, good -- we're not talking about dropping the USB stick case (I
don't think we test SD cards at all)
In most cases, I am using these SD cards with one of these "USB 
stick-like" adapters. So far, I've never had any boot/install related 
problems with these. Probably, the BIOS/UEFI sees them as USB sticks?



— basically the question is how
much time we should spend testing (and blocking!) on that rare
exceptional condition.


To me, these rare exceptional conditions come from 2 categories:
- No spare USB stick at hand (e.g when travelling)
- No USB or USB-boot available[1]

Ralf

[1] One of my machines (A very old one) doesn't support booting from 
USB. The only physical installation media available on this one is CDROMs.


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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Matthew Miller]

On Wed, Dec 07, 2016 at 03:54:25PM +0100, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> >Do you burn them to actual physical spinning optical media?
> 
> Nowadays, I usually put them on USB-sticks or SDCards. However I
> also have to admit having resorted to using optical media on very
> rare exceptional conditions.

Oh, good -- we're not talking about dropping the USB stick case (I
don't think we test SD cards at all) — basically the question is how
much time we should spend testing (and blocking!) on that rare
exceptional condition.


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Fedora Project Leader
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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Ralf Corsepius]

On 12/07/2016 03:05 PM, Matthew Miller wrote:

On Wed, Dec 07, 2016 at 02:05:20PM +0100, Ralf Corsepius wrote:

It's still a good test to do.  For example, Server and netinst ISO
images are used a lot for VMs, but not for bare metal.

Well, your view - I have been using netinst-ISOs only, in recently years ;)


Do you burn them to actual physical spinning optical media?


Nowadays, I usually put them on USB-sticks or SDCards. However I also 
have to admit having resorted to using optical media on very rare 
exceptional conditions.


Ralf
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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Matthew Miller]

On Wed, Dec 07, 2016 at 08:49:12AM -0500, Kamil Paral wrote:
> Since you're +1 here, do you have any opinion which release
> flavors/image types should be exempt from optical boot
> guarantee/criteria, and for which we should keep it? You have far a
> better overall idea of the project than I do.

I think: Workstation x86_64 Live, and at least one netinstall image of
any flavor (from which, in a pinch, anything else can be installed via
kickstart).


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Fedora Project Leader
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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Matthew Miller]

On Wed, Dec 07, 2016 at 02:05:20PM +0100, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> >It's still a good test to do.  For example, Server and netinst ISO
> >images are used a lot for VMs, but not for bare metal.
> Well, your view - I have been using netinst-ISOs only, in recently years ;)

Do you burn them to actual physical spinning optical media?

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Fedora Project Leader
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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Kamil Paral]

> > Idea #1: Do not block on optical media issues for Alpha and Beta releases
> > ~
> 
> My concern here is that if we don't make it a blocker for at least beta
> but do for final, it's setting us up for a scramble at final time.

I understand the concern. However, is that really different from other 
Final-only criteria we already have, like Windows/macOS dual-boot (often broken 
due to grub/uefi), or "every tiniest app has to work" (surprises lurking 
everywhere)? Also, delaying Beta or delaying Final might end up as the same 
delay overall.

I think there are two things combined. The first one is blocking status. I'd 
like to have blocking status set exactly for that milestone which we believe it 
should block (and not an earlier one, just in case). The second thing is 
detection. We should be able to detect these issues early in the process, but 
we often don't, and we can talk about improvements here. I usually strive to 
avoid the situation where we test a Final test case for the first time only 
after Beta release (or with Final RC1). That's too late. If nothing blocks it, 
we should be able to test those e.g. with Alpha images. We don't have a good 
process designed there, and the missed test cases often come down to a lack of 
time, but if we improve that, I believe that would address your concern, right?

> 
> > Idea #2: Do not block on optical media issues for Final release for
> > certain flavors/image types (Server, netinst)
> > ~
> 
> +1 to this one. But is there likely to be a case where it fails on just
> those? I guess this primarily reduces what you need to _test_. So,
> yeah, +1.

As Adam described, we had cases where only certain type of images were 
affected, due to compose misconfiguration. So it's possible (even though not 
that likely nor frequent). That's why I'm interested more in tweaking 
guarantees that Fedora as a project claims to have ("image XYZ must be bootable 
from DVD or USB"), rather than test coverage optimization (that's internal to 
QA team, we can discuss that in our test list).

We can of course decide here that we want to keep our "must boot from optical 
media" guarantee for all iso images we produce, but reduce the testing to just 
one image from each type (Live, DVD, netinst). But that makes me feel somewhat 
uneasy, similar to what Adam said. That's why I'm mainly interested in talking 
about criteria adjustments first.

Since you're +1 here, do you have any opinion which release flavors/image types 
should be exempt from optical boot guarantee/criteria, and for which we should 
keep it? You have far a better overall idea of the project than I do.
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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Ralf Corsepius]

On 12/07/2016 11:15 AM, Paolo Bonzini wrote:



On 06/12/2016 18:11, Adam Williamson wrote:

On Tue, 2016-12-06 at 15:00 +, Marcin Juszkiewicz wrote:

W dniu 06.12.2016 o 14:43, Kamil Paral pisze:


All of that is, of course, motivated by trying to spend QA time more
effectively. You can see the current coverage e.g. in this table [2],
overall we burn 6 DVDs and perform 12 optical installation (BIOS +
UEFI) for every release candidate published. We allow non-complete
(yet still substantial) coverage for Alpha and Beta, but 100%
coverage for Final for each candidate compose. That is quite time
consuming, both burning and installation from optical media take a
long time, it requires bare metal testing, and we can't use the
machines for anything else during that time.


Why not boot VM with virtual optical drive? You can choose BIOS/UEFI,
32/64bit and do not require bare metal hardware for it.


It's not a sufficient test. We have had real bugs in the past where a
VM would boot from an ISO image, but real systems would not boot from
the same ISO image burned to a real optical disc.

Virtual machines are great for convenience, but they are not real
hardware and we cannot in good conscience release our product without
testing it on real machines with real media.


It's still a good test to do.  For example, Server and netinst ISO
images are used a lot for VMs, but not for bare metal.


Well, your view - I have been using netinst-ISOs only, in recently years ;)

Ralf
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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Kamil Paral]

> I would favour to make optical media issues blockers for beta so they'll be
> (hopefully) solved by the time of the final release.

If something is a blocker, it's a blocker. If we detect such an issue before 
Beta, Beta can't be released until it is fixed.
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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Kamil Paral]

> 2) Just a thought - would it be more efficient to test ISOs in VMs to some
> point?
> For example, till the Alpha release, evertyhing mentioned here as a subject
> of possible changes could be tested only on VMs. After Alpha release, test
> would change to manual on real HW.

It might not be completely obvious from the [2] link I posted in my original 
email, but we already do that, we test images in VMs for Alpha/Beta/Final. 
We're expected to do the same for bare metal+optical drives, also for 
Alpha/Beta/Final. This proposal is about the latter part, trimming that down.
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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Kamil Paral]

> > Virtual machines are great for convenience, but they are not real
> > hardware and we cannot in good conscience release our product without
> > testing it on real machines with real media.
> 
> It's still a good test to do.  For example, Server and netinst ISO
> images are used a lot for VMs, but not for bare metal.

I wasn't clear on this, so let me be more specific. My proposal is only related 
to bare-metal optical media support (physical CD, DVD, BD). It is not related 
to VM booting at all, so our existing criteria would remain to hold - i.e. all 
the images have to be bootable in VMs since Alpha/Beta (Beta strictly per 
current criteria wording, but effectively I believe this would be approved even 
as an Alpha blocker). This would not change.
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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Paolo Bonzini]

On 06/12/2016 18:11, Adam Williamson wrote:
> On Tue, 2016-12-06 at 15:00 +, Marcin Juszkiewicz wrote:
>> W dniu 06.12.2016 o 14:43, Kamil Paral pisze:
>>
>>> All of that is, of course, motivated by trying to spend QA time more
>>> effectively. You can see the current coverage e.g. in this table [2],
>>> overall we burn 6 DVDs and perform 12 optical installation (BIOS +
>>> UEFI) for every release candidate published. We allow non-complete
>>> (yet still substantial) coverage for Alpha and Beta, but 100%
>>> coverage for Final for each candidate compose. That is quite time
>>> consuming, both burning and installation from optical media take a
>>> long time, it requires bare metal testing, and we can't use the
>>> machines for anything else during that time.
>>
>> Why not boot VM with virtual optical drive? You can choose BIOS/UEFI,
>> 32/64bit and do not require bare metal hardware for it.
> 
> It's not a sufficient test. We have had real bugs in the past where a
> VM would boot from an ISO image, but real systems would not boot from
> the same ISO image burned to a real optical disc.
> 
> Virtual machines are great for convenience, but they are not real
> hardware and we cannot in good conscience release our product without
> testing it on real machines with real media.

It's still a good test to do.  For example, Server and netinst ISO
images are used a lot for VMs, but not for bare metal.

Paolo
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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Adam Williamson]

On Tue, 2016-12-06 at 23:57 +0100, Michal Schorm wrote:
> It sounds reasonable to take a while and think about, who use wich media,
> and why we make it.
> 
> 1) As was said, ask server images users, how they prefer and how they
> actually install Fedora and make decision based on it.
> 
> 2) Just a thought - would it be more efficient to test ISOs in VMs to some
> point?

> For example, till the Alpha release, evertyhing mentioned here as a subject
> of possible changes could be tested only on VMs. After Alpha release, test
> would change to manual on real HW.

For Alpha and Beta, we already state:

"For Alpha and Beta, we expect a reasonable sampling of tests across
the table, with at least some testing for all three media types, both
firmware types, and each major class of deliverable (netinst, live and
DVD)."
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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Michal Schorm]

It sounds reasonable to take a while and think about, who use wich media,
and why we make it.

1) As was said, ask server images users, how they prefer and how they
actually install Fedora and make decision based on it.

2) Just a thought - would it be more efficient to test ISOs in VMs to some
point?
For example, till the Alpha release, evertyhing mentioned here as a subject
of possible changes could be tested only on VMs. After Alpha release, test
would change to manual on real HW.
 - again, it depends on how often QA come across bugs that occurs on real
HW, but not in VMs.



-- 

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Core Services - Databases Team
mail: msch...@redhat.com
Brno-IRC: mschorm
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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Ms Sanchez]

Hello all,

I would favour to make optical media issues blockers for beta so they'll 
be (hopefully) solved by the time of the final release.


My 2 cents.

Sylvia


On 06/12/16 16:28, Matthew Miller wrote:

On Tue, Dec 06, 2016 at 09:43:18AM -0500, Kamil Paral wrote:

So, I wonder whether Fedora as a project thinks about de-emphasizing
optical media a bit, and if it does, I'd make appropriate changes
even in our QA processes. Here are a couple of ideas that I consider
could be likely to happen in future Fedora releases.

I'm in favor overall.


Idea #1: Do not block on optical media issues for Alpha and Beta releases
~

My concern here is that if we don't make it a blocker for at least beta
but do for final, it's setting us up for a scramble at final time.


Idea #2: Do not block on optical media issues for Final release for
certain flavors/image types (Server, netinst)
~

+1 to this one. But is there likely to be a case where it fails on just
those? I guess this primarily reduces what you need to _test_. So,
yeah, +1.




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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Adam Williamson]

On Tue, 2016-12-06 at 09:20 -0800, Adam Williamson wrote:
> So an alternative to kparal's scheme would be to try and consider this,
> and say we test:
> 
> * Workstation live
> * Everything netinst
> * Server DVD

Or we could simply state that required coverage is 'one release-
blocking live, one release-blocking netinst, one release-blocking DVD
image', without specifying which ones precisely. That gives a bit more
flexibility and is easier to write.
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Fedora QA Community Monkey
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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Adam Williamson]

On Tue, 2016-12-06 at 10:28 -0500, Matthew Miller wrote:
> 
> > Idea #2: Do not block on optical media issues for Final release for
> > certain flavors/image types (Server, netinst)
> > ~
> 
> +1 to this one. But is there likely to be a case where it fails on just
> those? I guess this primarily reduces what you need to _test_. So,
> yeah, +1.

The nexus between 'test coverage' and 'blocker status' is a tricky
one. On the one hand, we've generally held, ever since introducing the
release criteria, that it's possible for something that's not covered
in regular testing to block the release. This has always been a thing
that could happen, and we've explicitly acknowledged the scenario at
various times.

On the other hand, a standard question when a blocker is proposed very
late is 'why wasn't this tested earlier?', and it always seems like a
good question at the time.

So we could *in theory* say that we don't require testing of every
release-blocking ISO as burned to an optical disc, but we would block
on any one of them being broken if someone happens to find that it is.
But we'd have to own that decision and not just refuse to grant blocker
status on the grounds that 'it wasn't tested early enough', etc.

As for the issue of how likely failures are in different images, it is
possible for bugs to affect some ISOs but not others, as the code paths
by which the different images are built are quite different. It's
certainly possible for an issue to affect lives but not traditional
installer images, or vice versa. It's much less likely that one live
image would be broken (in terms of actual bootability) but another
would not. I think it's less likely, but *possible*, for DVD to work
but netinst not (or vice versa) - I think we once actually had a case
where one of them had isohybrid run on it but the other didn't (though
that of course would affect *USB* boot, not optical media). I think
it's very unlikely for one netinst to work but another not.

So an alternative to kparal's scheme would be to try and consider this,
and say we test:

* Workstation live
* Everything netinst
* Server DVD

and consider those to be representative of the broad 'types' of ISOs in
terms of the compose process. That way we don't have to test
Workstation or Server netinsts, or the KDE live, on optical media.

I do have a kinda old-fashioned attachment to the idea that a real
human being should boot and install, in at least *some* way, each of
the release-blocking media we ship. But that might just be a personal
bias.
-- 
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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Adam Williamson]

On Tue, 2016-12-06 at 15:00 +, Marcin Juszkiewicz wrote:
> W dniu 06.12.2016 o 14:43, Kamil Paral pisze:
> 
> > All of that is, of course, motivated by trying to spend QA time more
> > effectively. You can see the current coverage e.g. in this table [2],
> > overall we burn 6 DVDs and perform 12 optical installation (BIOS +
> > UEFI) for every release candidate published. We allow non-complete
> > (yet still substantial) coverage for Alpha and Beta, but 100%
> > coverage for Final for each candidate compose. That is quite time
> > consuming, both burning and installation from optical media take a
> > long time, it requires bare metal testing, and we can't use the
> > machines for anything else during that time.
> 
> Why not boot VM with virtual optical drive? You can choose BIOS/UEFI,
> 32/64bit and do not require bare metal hardware for it.

It's not a sufficient test. We have had real bugs in the past where a
VM would boot from an ISO image, but real systems would not boot from
the same ISO image burned to a real optical disc.

Virtual machines are great for convenience, but they are not real
hardware and we cannot in good conscience release our product without
testing it on real machines with real media.
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | XMPP: adamw AT happyassassin . net
http://www.happyassassin.net
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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Matthew Miller]

On Tue, Dec 06, 2016 at 09:43:18AM -0500, Kamil Paral wrote:
> So, I wonder whether Fedora as a project thinks about de-emphasizing
> optical media a bit, and if it does, I'd make appropriate changes
> even in our QA processes. Here are a couple of ideas that I consider
> could be likely to happen in future Fedora releases.

I'm in favor overall.

> Idea #1: Do not block on optical media issues for Alpha and Beta releases
> ~

My concern here is that if we don't make it a blocker for at least beta
but do for final, it's setting us up for a scramble at final time.

> Idea #2: Do not block on optical media issues for Final release for
> certain flavors/image types (Server, netinst)
> ~

+1 to this one. But is there likely to be a case where it fails on just
those? I guess this primarily reduces what you need to _test_. So,
yeah, +1.


-- 
Matthew Miller

Fedora Project Leader
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Re: future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Marcin Juszkiewicz]

W dniu 06.12.2016 o 14:43, Kamil Paral pisze:

> All of that is, of course, motivated by trying to spend QA time more
> effectively. You can see the current coverage e.g. in this table [2],
> overall we burn 6 DVDs and perform 12 optical installation (BIOS +
> UEFI) for every release candidate published. We allow non-complete
> (yet still substantial) coverage for Alpha and Beta, but 100%
> coverage for Final for each candidate compose. That is quite time
> consuming, both burning and installation from optical media take a
> long time, it requires bare metal testing, and we can't use the
> machines for anything else during that time.

Why not boot VM with virtual optical drive? You can choose BIOS/UEFI,
32/64bit and do not require bare metal hardware for it.
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future of official optical media support in Fedora

[Kamil Paral]

Now that Fedora 25 is out of the door, I'd like to start a discussion about the 
future of officially-supported (meaning rigorously tested) optical media for 
future Fedora releases. Since I'm QA, I'm mainly interested in changes to our 
release criteria [1].

Let's start by saying I'm not asking for completely dropping optical media 
support. Even though hardware incapable of booting from USB is getting 
increasingly rare, I understand that there are still valid use cases from 
optical media, like pressing a bulk of DVDs for a very small price and handing 
it out at events or sending them into developing countries (that's how I 
started with Linux, after all, ~15 years ago). However, the world has moved on 
since then, I wonder whether some changes in decreasing the importance of 
optical media could be appropriate. All of that is, of course, motivated by 
trying to spend QA time more effectively. You can see the current coverage e.g. 
in this table [2], overall we burn 6 DVDs and perform 12 optical installation 
(BIOS + UEFI) for every release candidate published. We allow non-complete (yet 
still substantial) coverage for Alpha and Beta, but 100% coverage for Final for 
each candidate compose. That is quite time consuming, both burning and 
installation from optical media take a long time, it requires bare metal 
testing, and we can't use the machines for anything else during that time.

So, I wonder whether Fedora as a project thinks about de-emphasizing optical 
media a bit, and if it does, I'd make appropriate changes even in our QA 
processes. Here are a couple of ideas that I consider could be likely to happen 
in future Fedora releases.


Idea #1: Do not block on optical media issues for Alpha and Beta releases
~

In my guesstimation, the intersection between people able and willing to test 
pre-releases and people not able to boot from USB or PXE is getting very small. 
My reasoning for this is:
a) PCs unable to boot from USB are becoming rare. They are probably only (or 
mostly) very old i386 machines.
b) Users testing pre-releases usually have above-average technical skills 
and/or are technical enthusiasts, who tend to own newer hardware.
c) We now have Fedora Media Writer for all major operating systems, which can 
burn the image onto a flash drive with a nice simple user interface, so even 
people who can boot from both optical drive and USB and used to prefer optical 
drive (because it was simpler for them) should be covered now with our 
super-easy USB writing tool.

Implementing this idea doesn't mean optical media would immediately get broken 
for Alphas and Betas. We would still care about such issues (it would be needed 
for Final, if nothing else) and we would still test it from time to time during 
the whole cycle (even though not that frequently - we would rely more on 
community involvement, e.g. similar to alternative architectures). But we 
wouldn't block the Alpha/Beta release on these issues, just the Final release.


Idea #2: Do not block on optical media issues for Final release for certain 
flavors/image types (Server, netinst)
~

This is a bolder variant of the previous idea and can be done separately or 
combined with it. It makes optical media functionality not guaranteed even for 
Final release, but just for certain Fedora flavors or image types for which it 
makes sense (not all of them). Which images to cover, that's the heart of the 
discussion. If you look into our test matrix again, we currently block on 6 of 
them:
* Workstation Live + netinst
* KDE Live
* Server DVD + netinst
* Everything netinst

What comes first to my mind is Server (DVD + netinst). My guess is that people 
don't install Server from optical media, but rather from PXE or USB. I can't 
imagine installing Server boxes from DVDs. But I'd really like to hear from 
Server users how this is likely or not. Also, Server is most probably not given 
away at events. I don't know about sending Server DVDs to the developing world, 
we can make an inquiry about that.

Second idea would be netinst media. They require good network access, so 
there's no point in shipping them to developing countries, and I can hardly 
imagine giving them away at events. They are targeted at more professional 
audience, which is likely to use more modern hardware. We could make an 
exception of Everything netinst, which is universal and could be used for cases 
where Live images don't work (netinst can use text mode in case of severe 
graphical issues even with safe graphics mode on, or perhaps on ultra-low 
memory configurations).


What do you think? Does it make sense, or is it too early for such a change?


(CCing test list, but let's keep the discussion in a single list only, i.e. 
devel)

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