These are some draft notes for implementing a new upgrade and config system using git-fs. This is a work-in-progress.

There is the concept of "reboot-required-parameters". These are parameters in cmdline that require a reboot to take effect. Initially, these will only be git-revision and boot_append, but perhaps there will be more later.

• initrd:

  • If a git-revision value is present on cmdline, it is passed to git-fs. Otherwise, git-fs just mounts whatever HEAD points to. The latter happens when the image is ro, or a rw image is booted for the first time.

• live-config.sh / updates.sh:

  • If webc-cmdline=new is on the real cmdline, copy /live/image/live/webc-cmdline-new to /etc/webc/cmdline (in case downloading the new config fails)
  • Else, copy /live/image/live/webc-cmdline (if any) to /etc/webc/cmdline (in case downloading the new config fails)
  • Download the new config to /etc/webc/cmdline
  • If /live/image is not writable, bail out, we're done.
  • Run git fetch to fetch the git-revision from the new cmdline (no-op if this revision is already available, but still important to know if the boot is succesful)
  • If fetching the new cmdline and the git fetch worked, this is a successful boot and we need to do the bootloader magic required to make this the default boot option (and clean up the old default config, kernel and initrd as well, probably)
  • If any reboot-required-parameters changed, and the new git-revision is available in /.git (i.e. the git fetch worked):
    • Extract the kernel and initrd from the new git-revision and store them as /live/image/live/vmlinuz-$(git-revision) and /live/image/live/initrd-$(git-revision)
    • Generate a new bootloader config (appending the boot_append and git-revision value from the new cmdline and add webc-cmdline=new to the kernel cmdline) and store that as /live/image/boot/boot-new.cfg
    • Copy the new cmdline (/etc/webc/cmdline) to /live/image/live/webc-cmdline-new
    • Set up the bootloader to boot from this new config (extlinux has support for booting a particular boot entry once, perhaps syslinux as well?)
    • If auto_reboot is set in the new cmdline, reboot
  • Else, If any other parameters were changed:
    • Copy the new cmdline (/etc/webc/cmdline) to /live/image/live/webc-cmdline