Re: [Devil-Linux-discuss] Devil-Linux headless/remote upgrade

[Dominic R. <dl...@ed...>]

  Looks like a good approach (to my inexpert eyes). Could it be 
implemented without complete rewrite of the upgrade script? [Where is 
the upgrade script anyway?...]

Before we get too deep into this, can I just clear up how feasible it is 
to have 2 devices (presumably USB), one with first partition holding the 
old running DL release and one onto which we put the new DL release 
using install-on-usb. Then we reboot, leaving both devices plugged. Can 
we force booting with the device with the new DL release rather than the 
old one?

I think that with syslinux we can remove the boot flag from the old boot 
device/partition before rebooting and this will force machine to boot 
from the new boot device/partition. This may not work with grub however, 
because I understand it ignores the bootable flag. A disadvantage is 
that if, for some reason, the new DL fails to boot, we have also 
'broken' the old DL and will have to restore the bootable flag before it 
can boot.

Dominic

On 07/10/2010 20:48, Serge Leschinsky wrote:
> It's just a rough idea, please be lenient :)
>
> usually we have a new image reachable and can mount it from running system,
> execute upgrade script against existent config files and save the result (and
> backup!). Hopefully we can do it even more than one time :) in order to allow
> post factum review and rollback. So the process of config files modification
> will be moved from "new" system to "old" system.
>
> However, we rely on aufs format persistence or backward compatibility...
>
> Serge
>
> On 10/07/2010 06:51 AM, Heiko Zuerker wrote:
>> Hey,
>>
>> I like the idea, but I'm not sure we can really implement this.
>> The problem is that you possibly can't start the system without the
>> updated config.
>> Maybe anybody has an idea on how to solve this?
>>
>> Heiko
>>
>> Quoting Dominic Raferd<dl...@ed...>:
>>>    I very rarely use the local console (screen/keyboard) for accessing
>>> DL. It is much more convenient to access it by ssh, not least because I
>>> don't have to be physically in front of the machine.
>>>
>>> However the one time when I am required to be locally present is when
>>> upgrading from one release to the next, because the upgrade script runs
>>> before ssh is enabled. So I still need a local console [ or I guess
>>> serial console ] available.
>>>
>>> Is/could it be possible to run the upgrade script through ssh? Then DL
>>> would suit truly 'headless' installations requiring only an ethernet
>>> connection.
>>>
>>> Dominic