Automatically take an ostree snapshot before a major kernel update

[castrojo]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
A major kernel upgrade is a significant event (some hardware more significant than others). Sometimes I don't have the time to check when a major kernel update is coming because I'm not following fedora development or whatever, so it'd be nice to have an extra snapshot.

Describe the solution you'd like
It'd be nice to opt-in have an automatic ostree snapshot when a major release of the kernel is updated in Fedora and have it labelled as such. Ideally I never have to use it.

Describe alternatives you've considered
An alternative might be documentation on how one could set this up by hand, perhaps via a service unit or something to see how useful it is in the wild.

[travier]

Fedora Silverblue is build from Fedora packages. All updates in Fedora are pushed to the testing repository first and then pushed to stable if they receive enough karma or two weeks passed.

For Fedora Silverblue, you can use the fedora:fedora/$releasever/$arch/testing/silverblue ref to preview those incoming updates.

If we were to provide another build of Silverblue with another kernel, who would build and maintain those kernels? Fedora is usually switching from one kernel to the next as support gets dropped upstream.

The current user story / workaround for those impacted by a kernel bug is to keep updating the system while overriding the kernel version to keep it at a working version while the bug is reported and fixed upstream.

[castrojo]

If we were to provide another build of Silverblue with another kernel, who would build and maintain those kernels?

Oh sorry, I realized I am using the wrong terminology. I don't mean maintaining another kernel, I mean more like automatically pinning the previous deployment (with the old kernel) automatically as a checkpoint before I boot into a new kernel.

[travier]

With rpm-ostree you usually have 2 deployments available so you can rollback to the previous one after an update if it breaks.

If we pin a specific deployment, then we need a way to signal / unpin it at some later time too.

[travier]

I think you might be interested in coreos/rpm-ostree#577, which I wanted in the beginning too. Will try to make it happen.

[xrishox]

would be nice to have it automatically pin on kernel upgrades. could be unpinned and replaced with a new pin when the next kernel upgrade is released.

[travier]

I'll close this issue in favor of the one in the Fedora Atomic Desktop issue tracker: https://gitlab.com/fedora/ostree/sig/-/issues/2

While they are not strictly the same issue, this is one likely to happen as part of that change.