Arch Linux inside OSTree
Hi, I've put some work into making it easy to install Arch Linux inside OSTree. I have started creating a guide at https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Install_Arch_Linux_inside_OSTree with the intention of that being just another installation method like LUKS or LVM. Unfortunately, the page was moved to my personal space with the reason: "personal install guide for the author's os-tree wrapper, does not belong in the official namespace". This sounds like the Arch Linux project doesn't want to support this installation method. Is that correct? If yes, why? Thanks Michael
On 12/31/23 12:09, Michael Zimmermann wrote:
Hi,
I've put some work into making it easy to install Arch Linux inside OSTree. I have started creating a guide at https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Install_Arch_Linux_inside_OSTree with the intention of that being just another installation method like LUKS or LVM.
Unfortunately, the page was moved to my personal space with the reason: "personal install guide for the author's os-tree wrapper, does not belong in the official namespace". This sounds like the Arch Linux project doesn't want to support this installation method. Is that correct? If yes, why?
Thanks Michael
I will be diplomatic in response, but this highlights the growing problem with the Archlinux wiki that is become increasingly hostile to community edits or additions. The idea of the wiki is to encourage community involvement and not become a fiefdom for some over-zealous content maintainer. I have long promoted the Archlinux wiki as the "best wiki on the planet" and that held true for a decade from the time of my first involvement and contributions in 2009. However, the wiki is deteriorating in usefulness where pages no longer provide complete and concise information to accomplish a given task, but instead are filled with links to other pages (at non-specific jump locations) where the necessary information, once present on the current page, is purportedly now found. I understand this is done to make maintenance easier, have information in a single place, but in doing so the useful of the wiki has suffered greatly. Store the information once, but make that information available where needed. That is the whole idea behind dynamic web-page content. The postgresql page is an example of this type decay. Whether it be new contributions as Michael has attempted, or edits to make pages more useful and correct, any and all edits are being systematically rolled-back or moved without any attempt to understand why the addition or edit was offered. That isn't the way a wiki is supposed to work and it discourages user contributions. You only have to tell a user "Go away, your contributions are not wanted" once before they go away for good -- and the community and wiki suffers. Moderation of the wiki is fine, but it should be a two-way street, not a fiefdom where only the King's edits are welcomed. In this vein, I would propose a simple "vote" solution (much like StackOverflow does for questions/answers). Where an edit can be voted on (perhaps on the talk-page) and if downvotes are cast, a comment why the addition does not belong should be required -- along with an opportunity for the community member to improve the edit or addition to make it acceptable. Relevant discussion of whether the edit is needed and its impact on maintainability would also be proper in that context. I want to see new pages and ideas like Michael has, and I want to see the pages in the wiki be useful for completing the relevant task without being referred to 5 different non-specific locations in other pages where you left guessing why you ended up that page. This is written solely to elevate and hopefully find a solution to the wiki becoming unwelcoming to community contributions. This is an opportunity for improvement. If people like myself and Michael didn't are about contributing to Archlinux, we wouldn't waste the time, toil and energy trying to make it better. For those of us that have been with Arch for years, we know the distribution is worth making the effort for. Discuss among the powers that be, bounce it off Allan and get his feedback and let's find a solution that encourages community contributions. -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.
Hi, I will reiterate what I said in [another thread][1]: Talk wiki problems out on the wiki first before going somewhere else. I've created a [topic][2] on the wiki about this at the appropriate venue. I don't know what other things lead David to believe that the wiki as a whole is failing or why such a voting system would be easy to implement or work (think about how this would triple the storage for every edit, how stackoverflow requires users to have rep to cast votes, etc) That said, unlike the situation in that thread, I am also perplexed as to what things are allowed. [1]: https://lists.archlinux.org/hyperkitty/list/arch-general@lists.archlinux.org... [2]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/ArchWiki_talk:Maintenance_Team#Unofficial_i... -- Cheers, Aᴀʀᴏɴ
On 01.01.2024 02:19, David C. Rankin wrote: ...snip...
[...] I want to see the pages in the wiki be useful for completing the relevant task without being referred to 5 different non-specific locations in other pages where you left guessing why you ended up that page. ...snip...
Regardless of where this behavior happens, a wiki, the Arch wiki, any other Knowledge Base type documentation platform, duplicating information is rarely ever the correct approach. Self-contained articles are nice and helpful in theory but the maintenance effort is multiplied by number of articles when you have to change the information on every page it is put (if you can even track that) instead of just changing the page that is **referenced** everywhere once. Regards, Khorne
Could we perhaps use section transclusion (and a hatnote explaining where to edit) for that specific problem? Cheers, Aᴀʀᴏɴ
On Jan 2, 2024, at 12:31 PM, Khorne <khorne@khorne.me> wrote: On 01.01.2024 02:19, David C. Rankin wrote: ...snip...
[...] I want to see the pages in the wiki be useful for completing the relevant task without being referred to 5 different non-specific locations in other pages where you left guessing why you ended up that page. ...snip...
Regardless of where this behavior happens, a wiki, the Arch wiki, any other Knowledge Base type documentation platform, duplicating information is rarely ever the correct approach. Self-contained articles are nice and helpful in theory but the maintenance effort is multiplied by number of articles when you have to change the information on every page it is put (if you can even track that) instead of just changing the page that is **referenced** everywhere once.
Regards, Khorne
I don't know OSTree, but Michaels Article (currently at https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/User:M1cha/Install_Arch_Linux_inside_OSTree) looks really nice, well written, comprehensive, and definitely not like a "personal" install guide. Sure, we should prevent poor articles from cluttering the main namespace, and it probably doesn't hurt to add a Banner that this is not an officially supported install method, but official or not, it's a community wiki after all, and I'd be happy to see more content with quality like this on our beloved wiki. Happy new year, Lukaro On December 31, 2023 7:09:34 PM GMT+01:00, Michael Zimmermann <sigmaepsilon92@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi,
I've put some work into making it easy to install Arch Linux inside OSTree. I have started creating a guide at https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Install_Arch_Linux_inside_OSTree with the intention of that being just another installation method like LUKS or LVM.
Unfortunately, the page was moved to my personal space with the reason: "personal install guide for the author's os-tree wrapper, does not belong in the official namespace". This sounds like the Arch Linux project doesn't want to support this installation method. Is that correct? If yes, why?
Thanks Michael
On Sunday, 31 December 2023 at 19:09 (+0100), Michael Zimmermann wrote:
I've put some work into making it easy to install Arch Linux inside OSTree. I have started creating a guide at https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Install_Arch_Linux_inside_OSTree with the intention of that being just another installation method like LUKS or LVM.
To make the comparison with installation on LUKS or LVM fair, the guide would explain how to install Arch Linux inside OSTree using only the core utilities of the OSTree project. Neither the LUKS nor the LVM installation guides are wholly dependent on the contents of a git repository whose description is "Scripts for generating my personal Arch setup as an ostree deployment."
Unfortunately, the page was moved to my personal space with the reason: "personal install guide for the author's os-tree wrapper, does not belong in the official namespace". This sounds like the Arch Linux project doesn't want to support this installation method. Is that correct? If yes, why?
I am not a wiki contributor, but it seems clear that your utility's own description motivates the maintainer's view that your method is a personal install guide. To my eye, it appears more like a way to promote your script than a way to teach Arch users haw to use OSTree. If you want to promote your utility to other Arch users, a better place to start than writing a wiki page would be to use the "Community Contributions" forum [1]. As an Arch user who was not familiar with OSTree, I would find the wiki page more helpful if it started with a description of what OSTree is and why it is useful, with links to the official project and its documentation. Then, technical content that starts by explaining how to use the project's official tools to work with Arch and OSTree together. Finally, if your script allows users to do something that is not possible using the project's official tools (like overlaying pacman to update an image, maybe), then its use and why it is necessary would follow in a later section. Best, Jaron [1]: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewforum.php?id=27
You have a very fair take on this. Let me explain a few things:
To make the comparison with installation on LUKS or LVM fair, the guide would explain how to install Arch Linux inside OSTree using only the core utilities of the OSTree project. Neither the LUKS nor the LVM installation guides are wholly dependent on the contents of a git repository whose description is "Scripts for generating my personal Arch setup as an ostree deployment."
1) That repository started out as a "personal rootfs generator" but turned into a generic tool to generate any arch-based rootfs and also install it from within the live ISO. The description is simply outdated because I forgot to update it. On the top of the wiki page I put a note that the guide is WIP and I would have improved it over the coming weeks but it got moved faster than I was able to do so. 2) The tool "archlinux-ostree" exists because both creating a rootfs and creating a new ostree system require to be in very specific environments. The tool does that using podman-containers and chroots. Also, one exception aside, the tool doesn't actually wrap any ostree commands - it just sets up a certain environment and then either gives you a shell(e.g. for installing the bootloader) or runs your script(for generating a rootfs). So unfortunately, doing this without arch-ostree is simply unrealistic and tedious. Personally I don't see why not relying on simple tools would be a requirement though given that even arch itself does that by providing tons of tools like pacstrap or arch-chroot. My secret hope actually was to make the tool good enough so it can be moved to the official archlinux gitlab and turned into an official tool.
As an Arch user who was not familiar with OSTree, I would find the wiki page more helpful if it started with a description of what OSTree is and why it is useful, with links to the official project and its documentation. Then, technical content that starts by explaining how to use the project's official tools to work with Arch and OSTree together. Finally, if your script allows users to do something that is not possible using the project's official tools (like overlaying pacman to update an image, maybe), then its use and why it is necessary would follow in a later section.
That's very valuable feedback, thanks. I probably would have added a lot of that information later on, but it's great to have feedback with actual expectations from a reader. On Mon, Jan 1, 2024 at 7:55 AM Jaron Kent-Dobias <jaron@kent-dobias.com> wrote:
On Sunday, 31 December 2023 at 19:09 (+0100), Michael Zimmermann wrote:
I've put some work into making it easy to install Arch Linux inside OSTree. I have started creating a guide at https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Install_Arch_Linux_inside_OSTree with the intention of that being just another installation method like LUKS or LVM.
To make the comparison with installation on LUKS or LVM fair, the guide would explain how to install Arch Linux inside OSTree using only the core utilities of the OSTree project. Neither the LUKS nor the LVM installation guides are wholly dependent on the contents of a git repository whose description is "Scripts for generating my personal Arch setup as an ostree deployment."
Unfortunately, the page was moved to my personal space with the reason: "personal install guide for the author's os-tree wrapper, does not belong in the official namespace". This sounds like the Arch Linux project doesn't want to support this installation method. Is that correct? If yes, why?
I am not a wiki contributor, but it seems clear that your utility's own description motivates the maintainer's view that your method is a personal install guide. To my eye, it appears more like a way to promote your script than a way to teach Arch users haw to use OSTree. If you want to promote your utility to other Arch users, a better place to start than writing a wiki page would be to use the "Community Contributions" forum [1].
As an Arch user who was not familiar with OSTree, I would find the wiki page more helpful if it started with a description of what OSTree is and why it is useful, with links to the official project and its documentation. Then, technical content that starts by explaining how to use the project's official tools to work with Arch and OSTree together. Finally, if your script allows users to do something that is not possible using the project's official tools (like overlaying pacman to update an image, maybe), then its use and why it is necessary would follow in a later section.
Best, Jaron
Don't worry dear Michael! I am (better to say many of us are) excited to see it on ArchWiki. And if your tools are of a good quality and faith, there is a good chance going to official repos in the future. What happened to your article is just part of the process. I also exprienced the same many times, and at the end it results to a much better content. And to be specific, One can always refer to any good available tool for doing a task; but! if it's not available in Arch repositories yet, then it should not be introduced as the default tool for doing the task. -- Best Regards, Abraham Sent with Tutanota; https://tuta.com
Happy new Year :)! Maybe it's possible to split the Wiki. We have got the official Arch Linux repositories and apart from "third party repositories" we have got the Arch User Repository. I don't know if it's possible, but maybe we could have an official Arch Wiki and a Wiki that is kind of an "Arch User Wiki". Regards, Ralf
Erm, that probably wouldn't be maintained or hosted by the Arch devs. Maybe one could host one on Miraheze, but I doubt that would get much participation. -- Cheers, Aᴀʀᴏɴ
I've put some work into making it easy to install Arch Linux inside OSTree. I have started creating a guide at https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Install_Arch_Linux_inside_OSTree with the intention of that being just another installation method like LUKS or LVM.
Unfortunately, the page was moved to my personal space with the reason: "personal install guide for the author's os-tree wrapper, does not belong in the official namespace". This sounds like the Arch Linux project doesn't want to support this installation method. Is that correct? If yes, why?
Off-topic to your issue do you know how to make the os-tree based Arch with systemd-boot + UKI and not with Grub? -- damjan
I haven't tried this with anything but grub2 yet, but that would definitely be interesting. The bootloader needs to be supported by ostree though and systemd-boot doesn't seem to be supported yet: https://github.com/ostreedev/ostree/blob/5b23804a1a41588ec7b92445ece978df6f0... Here's a GitHub issue about UKI: https://github.com/ostreedev/ostree/issues/2753 On Sat, Jan 6, 2024 at 4:36 PM Damjan Georgievski <gdamjan@gmail.com> wrote:
I've put some work into making it easy to install Arch Linux inside OSTree. I have started creating a guide at https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Install_Arch_Linux_inside_OSTree with the intention of that being just another installation method like LUKS or LVM.
Unfortunately, the page was moved to my personal space with the reason: "personal install guide for the author's os-tree wrapper, does not belong in the official namespace". This sounds like the Arch Linux project doesn't want to support this installation method. Is that correct? If yes, why?
Off-topic to your issue
do you know how to make the os-tree based Arch with systemd-boot + UKI and not with Grub?
-- damjan
participants (10)
-
Aaron Liu
-
Abraham S.A.H.
-
Damjan Georgievski
-
David C. Rankin
-
Jaron Kent-Dobias
-
Khorne
-
Lime In a Jacket (Aaron Liu)
-
lukaro
-
Michael Zimmermann
-
Ralf Mardorf