Re: [Devil-linux-develop] Issues with remote update of DL

[Friedrich L. <fl...@fl...>]

Tim Tait wrote on 26.05.2004 19:22 MET:
> 
> While making some fixes to mount_cdrom for live update (due to issues 
> with read-only mounts of disk device) it occured to me there was another 
> issue - after reboot to a new version, pre_init will invoke for the 
> upgrade-config script where the user will be required to provide input 
> on the console. If the user is in fact at a remote location, the box is 
> now hung.

It times out in 5 minutes in this case. See around line 87 in pre_init. In CVS 
this file is build/scripts/script/pre_init.

When I look at this a second time I think we should change the if condition. In 
case of a timeout the returned character is the empty character so the upgrade 
is done. Then a confirmation asks to use this config and times out after 5 
minutes and then the old configuration is restored and another confirmation 
times out in 5 minutes. So we are finally at 15 minutes till such system boots 
after remote upgrade without local input.

Therefore I think in case of a timeout in the upgrade confirmation we should 
rather not upgrade at all but start the system after a shortend timeout of lets 
say 2 minutes.

> Q: It looks like upgrade-config needs some post-processing to actually 
> upgrade the real config?
> 
> A few alternatives occurred to me -
> 
> - Make the choice to run upgrade-config default to "no", and let user 
> ssh in later to run it.  Can we setup all interactive logins to check 
> for mismatch and prompt/run the upgrade script there? In some situation, 
> the boot might not be succesfull unless the config is upgraded.

If you keep your update within the series, eg. update from 1.x.y to 1.x.z then 
the config files should not have changed. You might miss one or the other update 
to a start script but a boot should not fail.

But this is only true if we can keep to ourselfs and only do bugfixes to stable 
releases. With a development version of DL I would not advice to do remote 
update - too much can happen here.



> - Add another boot-line option like "DL_remote" that would indicate 
> never to require console input. This could be used to skip the upgrade 
> prompt entirely, or just change the default answer.

Why not just create a special file on the configuration media to signal that we 
should boot without user interaction after the upgrade?


> - Add and option to upgrade-config that takes default choices if no 
> answer in n seconds, and leave the pre_init stuff alone.

See above.

> pre_init  could 
> detect the new "DL_remote" flag and call upgrade-config with the right 
> options.  The user could ssh in to accept and save the new config, or 
> reject it and run the upgrade script again.

Bruce, can one run upgrade-config in the running system or will this break 
horribly for sure. One problem would be that we should eg. stop all running 
services but not sshd automatically in this case, right?

-- 
MfG / Regards
Friedrich Lobenstock
____________________________________________________________________
Friedrich Lobenstock                       Linux Services Lobenstock
URL: http://www.lsl.at/                         Email: fl...@fl...
____________________________________________________________________