[Engine-devel] [Users] [Feedback required][host-deploy] Fedora-19 misses tar at minimal setup

[Alon Bar-Lev]

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Juan Hernandez" <jhernand at redhat.com>
> To: "Yedidyah Bar David" <didi at redhat.com>
> Cc: engine-devel at ovirt.org
> Sent: Tuesday, July 30, 2013 9:25:13 PM
> Subject: Re: [Engine-devel] [Users] [Feedback required][host-deploy]	Fedora-19 misses tar at minimal setup
> 
> On 07/30/2013 03:07 PM, Yedidyah Bar David wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> >> From: alonbl at redhat.com, at at redhat.com, "Alon Bar-Lev"
> >> <redhat.com at redhat.com>
> >> Sent: Monday, July 29, 2013 10:15:33 AM
> >> Subject: [Engine-devel] [Users] [Feedback required][host-deploy]	Fedora-19
> >> misses tar at minimal setup
> >>
> > [snip]
> >>
> >> for some reason fedora-18/19 got tar out of base system, so we are
> >> forced to find some solution, although manual configuration is required
> >> anyway (repository, networking etc...).
> >>
> >> there was attempt to use python tar module, however this module has a
> >> bug when last block is empty, so it is not suitable for usage.
> >>
> >> cpio is alternative for fedora, however it is rightfully missing from
> >> other distributions as it is much less used. as we do not support hosts
> >> using different distributions, we are ok now.
> >>
> >> in future, we can use python self extract script, work already performed
> >> at: I1e5ddab9ae87979da7d7296c4f3c7ef08e21e903 at the price of
> >> complexity.
> >>
> >> Change-Id: I1386e7d688a9ec7e28519fb407478fd17cbab4ca
> >> Signed-off-by: Alon Bar-Lev <alonbl at redhat.com>
> >>
> >> [1] http://gerrit.ovirt.org/#/c/17396/
> >>
> >
> > FWIW:
> >
> > I personally find it least ugly to choose neither cpio nor pyar, and
> > require installing tar.
> >
> > Besides Ohad's case in the bug, do we know about real problems?
> > Is there a specific requirement to be able to run a node on a minimal
> > installation of $distro? Some other real complications this might cause?
> >
> > Anyway, if we do have to choose, I'd go with pyar and not cpio. cpio is
> > used by rpm and initramfs, but other than that it's not very common (?
> > IMHO),
> > and if we go with it we might face ourselves in the same situation at some
> > later point in time - that cpio will not be included in a minimal
> > installation
> > of $distro.
> >
> > Best regards,
> >
> 
> As far as I know most distributions use initramfs to boot, and that
> requires the cpio command to build it, so all machines running Fedora,
> RHEL, CentOS, Debian, Ubuntu and Gentoo (if using genkernel) should have
> cpio installed even for minimal installations.

Hi,

Binary based distributions do not build initramfs on the fly, right? Require cpio to build initramfs is like require gcc to build kernel, no?

RHEL, CentOS does have tar at minimal as far as I know...

Gentoo does not have genkernel/cpio in stage3 (minimal).

All but Fedora have tar at minimal.

Regards,
Alon