[BlueOnyx:23847] Re: source code of the bootable iso

[Michael Stauber]

Hi Tomohiro Hosaka,

> I've been upgrading online since the days of BlueQuartz (centos3).

Ah, very nice.

> This time of the upgrade, in order from the CentOS6 to CentOS7, we
> found that it is difficult.sAndTricks/CentOSUpgradeTool
> 
> # preupg -s CentOS6_7
> ...
> ... many errors...

Yes, I can imagine. I did a few tests myself trying to figure out how to
possibly do an upgrade from CentOS 6 -> CentOS 7.

My bottom line is: It's not worth the hassles.

Even if one creates a procedure that works for a "stock" BlueOnyx: Any
deviation from baseline install will cause issues. And after several
years of running the usual BlueOnyx will certainly have some extras
installed that aren't stock. May that be PKGs from the shop, some RPMs
from Epel or other sources and perhaps even the odd PECL or PEAR module
or tarball-install from somewhere. All of that will cause problems
during or after an upgrade.

As is the best and cleanest way is a fresh install and then to use "Easy
Migrate" (instead of CMU) to migrate the data:

https://www.blueonyx.it/easy-migrate

> I tried running BlueOnyx 5209R with bhyve.
> 
> BlueOnyx-5209R-CentOS-7.7-20200116.iso does not support UEFI.
> grub2-bhyve is not a real grub, so its functionality is limited.
> I can't show the menu, so I have to hard-code it.

Yeah, EFI support is an issue. So far we only have it for the
BlueOnyx-5210R ISO, which supports both EFI and non-EFI.

Did you try the latest BlueOnyx-5210R-CentOS-8.1.1911-20200516.iso yet?
Maybe that works for you.

> It is ext4 until BlueOnyx-5209R-CentOS-7.7-20191010.iso, and below
> BlueOnyx-5209R-CentOS-7.7-20191118.iso
> /ks/kickstart.cfg  -> xfs
> /ks/kick_nolvm.cfg -> xfs
> /ks/kick_small.cfg -> xfs
> /ks/kick_self.cfg  -> ext4

Yes, that's right. For 5210R we needed XFS, but perl-Quota would not
work on CentOS 8 and so far we had needed that for Quota management.
Eventually I created a drop-in replacement for perl-Quota that uses the
Quota Shell-Tools. The benefit there is that this now supports XFS,
EXT4, EXT3, EXT2 and might even work with btrfs.

That new code was easy to port back to 5209R, which is why I switched
the 5209R ISO to use XFS by default as well. For large volumes XFS
provides much faster journal recovery in case of unclean shutdowns.

But I can easily change the 5209R ISO to again offer EXT4 support. I'll
drop in another menu entry that defaults to using EXT4 and uses a new
kickstart file during install. Something like /ks/kickstart_ext4.cfg or
similar.

I'll try to have that ready for you within the next 1-2 days. I wanted
to do an updated 5209R ISO anyway as the last one is from March this year.

> To understand the difference between cd-install and manual-install,
> I wanted to find out about the processes that take place before
> /usr/sausalito/scripts/initServices.sh

Over the years the differences between CD install and manual install via
YUM have shrunk considerably. The 5209R CD install still has that one
extra-RPM called "blueonyx-cd-installer", which traditionally had some
extra first-run scripts that are executed once at the end of the ISO
install. These steps by now have been merged into initServices.sh.

The "blueonyx-cd-installer" use to have the /root/network_settings.sh
and some related files, but these bits and pieces have since long been
merged into the mandatory RPM base-blueonyx-*.

5210R dropped the "blueonyx-cd-installer" RPM entirely, as all pre- and
post-install procedures are now merged into BlueOnyx itself. The only
things you need to manually do on a CentOS 7 or CentOS 8 before and
after you YUM-install are outlined in the install instructions:

https://www.blueonyx.it/5210r-manual-install
https://www.blueonyx.it/5209r-manual-install

A YUM installed BlueOnyx is fully compatible with an ISO installed
BlueOnyx of the same version and there shouldn't be any differences
except for the partitioning scheme and possibly the type of file-system.

-- 
With best regards

Michael Stauber