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Allow to choose boot_mode for x86_64

Open djuarezg opened this issue 5 years ago • 17 comments

We can boot UEFI guests but we allow no option to do so to users. This extra option allows to make this difference

djuarezg avatar Feb 21 '20 14:02 djuarezg

@clalancette @ganto @nullr0ute @tkopecek Could you please take a look at this and see if it could be merged? There are use cases where the boot mode does matter, such as partitioning or configuring the bootloader.

Applying this as a local patch is certainly not ideal.

djuarezg avatar Jan 20 '21 08:01 djuarezg

Can you explain the problem a bit more? I don't understand the problem from your sentence above.

nullr0ute avatar Jan 20 '21 09:01 nullr0ute

An example on why the boot mode is important can be creating disk images with specific partitioning configurations. BIOS and UEFI modes require different partitioning. For kickstart installations, Anaconda behaves differently depending on which boot mode the machine booted. For reference, CentOS 8 Azure images assume the machine is in UEFI mode.

Without this patch, Oz does only boot x86_64 virtual machines on BIOS mode. This PR allows users to choose which boot mode they boot in.

We have been using this patch in production for already one year without issues.

djuarezg avatar Jan 20 '21 09:01 djuarezg

We have a downstream patch that does this in Fedora: https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/oz/blob/master/f/11-make-uefi-configurable.patch

nullr0ute avatar Jan 20 '21 09:01 nullr0ute

Is there any way that configuration gets to upstream? This is not a Fedora exclusive feature.

djuarezg avatar Jan 20 '21 09:01 djuarezg

Upstream maintenance has mostly stagnated hence why we have a series of patches downstream. I am not an upstream maintainer.

nullr0ute avatar Jan 20 '21 09:01 nullr0ute

@clalancette could you add some more maintainers? Is there some other way the community could help?

alexiri avatar Jan 20 '21 11:01 alexiri

Upstream maintenance has mostly stagnated hence why we have a series of patches downstream. I am not an upstream maintainer.

In short; this is absolutely correct, I have not had time to maintain this repository in recent years.

@clalancette could you add some more maintainers? Is there some other way the community could help?

I could definitely add some people to help with maintenance. I want to make sure that whoever becomes the maintainer is a) going to be more active, and b) not going to insert malware into the repository. I'm not quite sure how to ensure that, but I am willing to hear ideas and nominations.

clalancette avatar Jan 24 '21 19:01 clalancette

I could definitely add some people to help with maintenance. I want to make sure that whoever becomes the maintainer is a) going to be more active, and b) not going to insert malware into the repository. I'm not quite sure how to ensure that, but I am willing to hear ideas and nominations.

I could assist, I've been maintaining it to some degree in Fedora and have been active in Fedora from the outset and a Red Hat employee for nearly 9 years. Maybe moving it to another account is an option to.

nullr0ute avatar Jan 24 '21 20:01 nullr0ute

What about moving to some github org? E.g https://github.com/fedora-infra or https://github.com/release-engineering/ ?

tkopecek avatar Jan 25 '21 08:01 tkopecek

@clalancette ^ ?

tkopecek avatar Apr 14 '21 11:04 tkopecek

@tkopecek So, I'm reluctant to move the repository to a Fedora-specific organization, since this package isn't really Fedora-specific.

But clearly I haven't had time for it. Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to add write access to @nullr0ute right now. That will allow somebody access to review and merge PRs. Assuming that works out over the next little while, I'll probably then think about upgrading @nullr0ute to an Admin role.

I'm also willing to give one or two other people write access, so if anyone else wants to help maintain, please let me know. Note that raising your hand doesn't mean I'm going to automatically add you, I'll have to do some research first.

Finally, we can have a separate discussion about moving this to another org. I'm fine with that idea in general, but not with moving it to something fedora-specific.

Hopefully all of this is enough to at least allow some movement on this repository.

clalancette avatar Apr 14 '21 22:04 clalancette

Thank you! It should help a lot, let's see how it will work :-)

tkopecek avatar Apr 15 '21 07:04 tkopecek

@clalancette @nullr0ute so far it doesn't seem to be working out very differently. :(

alexiri avatar Jul 13 '21 16:07 alexiri

@nullr0ute @clalancette any suggestions how to improve this?

tkopecek avatar Sep 08 '21 13:09 tkopecek

@nullr0ute https://github.com/clalancette/oz/commit/b7728d5bde9741786d2cd60806411e8462cfb3e5 seems to do something similar to this PR but I cannot seem to understand how that is configurable. Should this PR be adapted? Should your commit be adapted?

djuarezg avatar Feb 22 '22 11:02 djuarezg

https://github.com/clalancette/oz/issues/295 also seems to indicate that b7728d5bde9741786d2cd60806411e8462cfb3e5 wasn't very well tested.

alexiri avatar Feb 22 '22 13:02 alexiri