[arch-releng] RFC: Automated Install

[dif]

(I'm not a programmer, but) wouldn't program sgdisk that belongs to the 
gptfdisk package be enough to do the automated/scripted partitioning. 
I'm pretty sure it is in the official ISO. At least, it was a few years 
ago when I used it a few times.

dif
----------------------------
On 09.07.2021 08:24, brent s. via arch-releng wrote:
> Hey, all.
>
> One of the things that I feel limits Arch Linux is the lack of an
> ability to kick off an unattended install. Sure, you can boot via PXE or
> the like, but the actual install does not take place.
>
> I'm in the middle of writing a tool that will do just this[0]. Much like
> RedHat's Kickstart or Debian's preseed, it uses kernel commandline
> options/parameters to fetch a configuration, parses that configuration,
> and then installs Arch according to that specified configuration.
> (Everything from partitioning disks to installing certain packages, etc.)
> Note that it isn't intended to make the install process "easier", per
> se; it intends to do it with *minimal to no user interaction*. One would
> need a very clear understanding and familiarity with the manual Arch
> install process to make use of this.
>
> The reason I'm even writing to this list instead of say, just having a
> package on the AUR as it makes little to no sense to run this software
> on anything but the install medium.
>
>
> In order to perform things like disk partitioning and the like, I'm
> thinking of using the udisks2 API via DBUS.
> Unfortunately, this means that it (udisks2) would need to be included in
> the live ISO image (or an alternate one would be spun up).
>
> Alternatively I could do it via libblockdev and gobject-introspection,
> but that is... significantly more complicated.
>
> As such, a couple questions:
>
>
> 1.) Is the RelEng team interested in adding such an unattended install
> ability to Arch Linux (especially one developed externally)?
>
>
> 2.) a.) Would udisks2 (and perhaps other libraries) be able to be added
> to the standard installer ISO?
>          As of udisks2-2.9.2-1, for instance, this would add 14086.78 KiB
> (~14 MiB) to the squashed root (before squashing).
>
> 2.) b.) If not, would the amount of maintenance overhead required for
> mastering a separate ISO be worth the feature-add?
>
> Thank you in advance for your feedback.
>
>
> [0] In Golang so it could be easy to package, contained to a relatively
> localized install, and still relatively accessible to outside
> contributors. A couple years ago I had an implementation written in
> Python but this was discouraged as it would be far too complex to
> maintain, both from a codebase and a RelEng perspective (which, fair
> point). Golang also would allow for some cleaner parallel operations as
> well, though one may argue this is more of a nice-to-have in an install
> context.
>