Reinstall While Retaining Home

[mmstick]

What has changed

• A new distinst_install_options_new() method is exposed in the C API.
  • When supplied with a reference to a Disks, it will create multiple lists of install options.
  • Those options may then be used within an InstallOption to apply the option to a Disks.
  • A RecoveryOption can be used to perform a recovery install
  • A RefreshOption can install onto and reuse partitions from an existing install, and thereby be used to perform a factory reset, refresh retaining user accounts, or upgrades
  • A EraseOption will erase an entire disk and install with a default configuration, either encrypted or unencrypted
• When config.old_root is set, an install will retain home.
  • This will require that the partition where /home exists in Disks is not set to be formatted.
  • It will also require that an existing / partition was specified in Config.
  • A different / partition with a different filesystem may be specified, but only if /home is on a separate partition and is not set to be formatted.
  • User accounts will be backed up based on the contents of /home, from /etc/passwd, /etc/group, etc/shadow, and etc/gshadow.
  • The user account will be based on the home field in /etc/passwd.
  • The user group will be based on the group ID field in /etc/passwd.
  • This method will do the install after backing up the user account info.
  • Then on post-install, it will append them to the new install.
  • The /etc/timezone & /etc/localtime settings will also be restored.
  • NetworkManager network connections will also be restored.
• Small improvement to DiskOps so that physical devices within Disks will not go through the process of executing disk operations.
• Some changes to use unowned uint8[] in the C/Vala API instead of string where possible.
• A new device_map_exists() function for the C/Vala API, to be used in the decrypt menu
• A new device_layout_hash() function can be used to know when to reload devices & options

What the frontend will need to do

• A view for allowing the user to select from a list of installation options
• Ability to decrypt existing LUKS devices to detect more installation options
• An erase option will simply apply the default disk configuration
• A refresh option can either be a reset to wipe user accounts and files, or retain them

Install options to support?

• Fresh install (wipe the disk & install with default config)
• Refresh (reinstall while retaining home & user accounts)
• Reset (reinstall without retaining home or user accounts)
• Custom install

[mmstick]

I have just succeeded in doing a reinstall which retained user accounts (passwords & data).

cargo build --release --examples
sudo target/release/examples/default-install erase $DEVICE

# Reboot and create account, then reboot back

sudo target/release/examples/default-install retain

# Select discovered device on $DEVICE, then reboot and try to log in

[mmstick]

I believe this is ready for review now.

[jackpot51]

Perhaps retain_home should be added to the config? Maybe as a flag?

[mmstick]

I'll try that

[jackpot51]

Nice! I like this better with the config option

[jackpot51]

Is this ready to merge @mmstick ?

[mmstick]

@jackpot51 Yes, it is ready. I'll be adding more PRs in the future to improve it further.

[jackpot51]

Great!