Release notes¶
This document describes major installer-related changes in Fedora releases.
A guide on adding new entries is in the release documentation.
Fedora 39¶
Changes in the graphical interface¶
Use keyboard layout configuration from the Live system¶
Until now, users had to specify keyboard layout for the Live environment manually in Anaconda. With this change, live system itself is responsible for the keyboard configuration and Anaconda just reads the configuration from the live system for the installed system.
The live keyboard layout is used automatically only if the user does not specify it manually. At this moment, only Gnome Shell environment is supported.
This is proper fix for https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2016613 which was resolved by a workaround in the past. It is also a step forward to resolve https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1955025.
Changes in kickstart support¶
New kickstart options to control DNS handling¶
There are several new options for the network
kickstart command to control handling of DNS:
The
--ipv4-dns-search
and--ipv6-dns-search
allow manual setting of DNS search domains. These options mirror their respective NetworkManager properties, for example:network --device ens3 --ipv4-dns-search example.com,custom-intranet-domain.biz (...)
--ipv4-ignore-auto-dns
and--ipv6-ignore-auto-dns
allow ignoring DNS settings from DHCP. These options do not take any arguments.
All of these network
command options must be used together with the --device
option.
Changes in Anaconda configuration files¶
Deprecated configuration options are now removed¶
The following deprecated configuration file options are now removed:
kickstart_modules
addons_enabled
Allow to turn off geolocation for language selection¶
New Localization
section with use_geolocation
option is added to Anaconda
configuration. The option allows to turn off geolocation for language selection.
Architecture and hardware support changes¶
Add support for compressed kernel modules¶
Support for Driver Discs containing compressed kernel modules has been added. Support for compressed kernel modules is limited to file extensions .ko.bz2, .ko.gz, .ko.xz and .ko.zst.
Wait 5 secs during boot for OEMDRV devices (#2171811)¶
Because disks can take some time to appear, an additional delay of 5 seconds
has been added. This can be overridden by boot argument
inst.wait_for_disks=<value>
to let dracut wait up to <value> additional
seconds (0 turns the feature off, causing dracut to only wait up to 500ms).
Alternatively, if the OEMDRV
device is known to be present but too slow to be
autodetected, the user can boot with an argument like inst.dd=hd:LABEL=OEMDRV
to indicate that dracut should expect an OEMDRV
device and not start the
installer until it appears.
General changes¶
New Runtime module¶
Anaconda now has a new D-Bus module called Runtime
. This module stores run-time
configuration of the installer and provides methods for the overall installer flow control.
Warning: This module must always run, or anaconda crashes. Users of the following configuration file entries must adapt to this change:
kickstart_modules
activatable_modules
forbidden_modules
optional_modules
Make the EFI System Partition at least 500MiB in size¶
The minimum size of the EFI System Partition (ESP) created by Anaconda has changed from 200 MiB to 500 MiB. The maximum size, which is used in most cases, remains at 600 MiB.
- The reasons for this change include:
This partition is used to deploy firmware updates. These updates need free space of twice the SPI flash size, which will grow from 64 to 128 MiB in near future and make the current partition size too small.
The new minimum is identical with what Microsoft mandates OEMs allocate for the partition.
- See also:
Respect preferred disk label type provided by blivet (#2092091, #2209760)¶
In Fedora 37, anaconda was changed to always format disks with GPT disk labels, so long as blivet reported that the platform supports them at all (even if blivet indicated that MBR labels should be preferred). This was intended to implement a plan to prefer GPT disk labels on x86_64 BIOS installs, but in fact resulted in GPT disk labels also being used in other cases. Now, we go back to respecting the preferred disk label type indicated by blivet, by default (a corresponding change has been made to blivet to make it prefer GPT labels on x86_64 BIOS systems). The inst.disklabel option can still be used to force a preference for gpt or mbr if desired.
Install an image using systemd-boot rather than grub (#2135531)¶
With this release, systemd-boot can be selected as an alternative boot loader for testing and development purposes.
This can be done with inst.sdboot
from the grub/kernel command
line or with --sdboot
in a kickstart file as part of the
bootloader command. The resulting machine should be free of grub,
shim, and grubby packages, with all the boot files on the EFI
System Partition (ESP). This may mean that it is wise to dedicate
the space previously allocated for /boot
to the ESP in order to
assure that future kernel upgrades will have sufficient space.
For more information, refer to the anaconda and systemd-boot documentation.
Fedora 38¶
Changes in the graphical interface¶
Modernized welcome screen on Live CD¶
The welcome screen on Live CD has been changed to follow the current design patterns, as well as fit better into the surrounding GTK4-based interface. See the pull request #4616 for more information.
Improved configuration of additional repositories in GUI¶
Configuration of additional repositories in the graphical user interface has been improved. The protocol selection is now replaced with a drop-down menu of source actions. The screen also shows only configuration options relevant to the selected source action. See the pull request #4498 for more details.
Installation source errors are visible again¶
Previously, errors related to contents of the Installation Source screen did not cause the error message bar to appear at the bottom of the screen. As a consequence, users could not review the error messages and immediately correct the errors on the screen. The error message bar now appears correctly when errors occur. As a result, users can immediately notice errors in the Installation Source screen and correct them. See the pull request #4501.
Japanese translation fits the whole screen¶
Previously, using Anaconda in Japanese caused the main screen elements to use larger font than in other languages. As a consequence, the user settings were hidden outside the visible screen area and required scrolling. The sizing has been corrected, and Japanese users can now see the user settings icon and description even on the smallest supported screen sizes again. See the pull request #4325.
Architecture and hardware support changes¶
Do not pass the rd.znet boot argument on to the installed system unconditionally¶
With this change, the rd.znet boot argument is no longer passed on to the installed system unconditionally on IBM Z systems and the network device is configured and activated after switchroot by udev/NetworkManager. When networking is needed early in initramfs (like in a case of the root file system on iSCSI), rd.znet is automatically added to the kernel command line of the installed via a different mechanism. See the pull request #4303.
The dmraid and nodmraid boot options are removed¶
The inst.dmraid
and inst.nodmraid
boot options have been removed. These options no longer
controlled any functionality, after Anaconda started using mdadm
instead of dmraid
.
See the pull request #4517 and the related
Fedora Change.
Biosboot partition verification¶
The biosboot partition is now verified on all installation target disks. This improves support for booting from an array. See the pull request #4277.
Multiple bootloader devices on the Manual Partitioning screen¶
With this change, the graphical interface displays correctly all bootloader devices on the Manual Partitioning screen. See the pull request #4271.
Payload changes¶
Add support for OSTree native containers¶
Fedora is adding a new enhanced container support for the (rpm-)ostree stack to natively support OCI/Docker containers as a transport and delivery mechanism for operating system content. Anaconda now supports these containers by a new kickstart command ostreecontainer. See the pull request #4617, Fedora Change and Pykickstart.
rpm-ostree now validates checksums for local repositories¶
Previously, rpm-ostree installations verified checksums only for installations from a remote repository, while installations from local repositories did not verify the checksums. As a consequence, rpm-ostree installations from local repositories could install corrupted data without any indication. This behavior is now unified, and Anaconda verifies checksums for all rpm-ostree repositories. As a result, all rpm-ostree installations are now protected against installing corrupted data. See the pull request #4357 for more information.
Kickstart support¶
Creating hibernation swap from kickstart¶
The new autopart (...) --hibernation
kickstart option creates a swap partition with an
automatically determined size that is big enough for hibernation.
See the pull request #4275.
General changes¶
Faster core dumps¶
Previously, Anaconda used a custom setup for handling tracebacks and saving core dumps. This is
now realized by using the faulthandler
Python module and the systemd-coredump
service.
As a result, the same debugging data is still available, while the installation environment
becomes responsive significantly sooner after tracebacks. As a side effect, the logs from Anaconda
and the installation environment now contain different error messages.
See the pull request #4350 for more information.
The Web UI of Anaconda is now packaged in Fedora¶
Anaconda team is working for some time on the new Web UI frontend for the installer and to make this in development Web UI more accessible to people we decided to add this as a new package to Fedora repositories. To be able to consume this Web UI, you need to build ISO with the Web UI package and add kernel boot arguments inst.webui. This package is not included in the existing Fedora images by default. See the pull request #4269.
Fedora 37¶
General changes¶
GPT is the default disk label type¶
Fedora Linux systems installed on legacy x86 BIOS systems will get GPT partitioning by default instead of legacy MBR partitioning. This should be a new default for all products. See the Fedora Change for more info.
Read-only /sysroot on RPM OSTree systems¶
The RPM OSTree installations set the /sysroot
mount point as read-only instead of read-write
to make the newly installed systems more robust. Users and administrators are not expected to
directly interact with the content available there and should use the available interfaces to
manage their system. See the pull request
and the Fedora Change.
Anaconda doesn’t copy /etc/resolv.conf to systems¶
Anaconda does not copy the /etc/resolv.conf
file from the installation environment to
the installed system anymore. Creating the file is a business of systemd-resolved
or
the Network Manager. Anaconda is not going to interfere into this process anymore.
Currently the file is created by systemd-resolved
package during the installation.
See the pull requests #3814 and
#3818.
Correct SELinux contexts on existing home directories¶
Previously, the installer set incorrect SELinux contexts on home directory contents when reusing home directory from previous installation. The contexts are now set correctly. See the pull request.
Enabled hibernation on arm64 with swap¶
Previously, the installer enabled resume from hibernation by adding kernel command line option
resume=swap_device
only on the x86 architecture family. With this change, the same is done
also for the arm64 architecture. As a result, devices of the arm64 architecture are now able to
correctly resume from hibernation.
See the pull request.
Changed default swap size for large-memory systems¶
The default swap size on systems with 64 GiB or more RAM is 32 GiB now. Previously, it was 4 GiB. See the pull request.
Removed some scripts provided by Anaconda¶
The following undocumented installed scripts were removed from anaconda packages:
/usr/bin/analog
/usr/bin/restart-anaconda
The following unused development scripts were removed from the Anaconda repository:
run_boss_locally.py
anaconda-read-journal
list-screens
make-sphinx-docs
Changes in the graphical interface¶
The media verification dialog is improved¶
Previously, the media verification dialog indicated a good or bad media check result using the same sentence, differing only in presence of a single “not”. Additionally, the dialog did not visually change much upon completion of the check. Consequently, it was not easy to interpret the result of the media check, or even see if it was finished.
The dialog now uses a large icon to signal whether the media is good or not, and while the check is running, this icon is absent. As a result, it is now possible to easily tell the state of the media check. See the pull request and the screenshot.
Improved calculation of the space estimation¶
During automatic partitioning the disk spoke estimates the space required for the installation and if there isn’t enough free space it display a warning dialog suggesting more space should be reclaimed. This estimate included the recommended swap size even when swap wasn’t configured to be created. See the bug 2068290.
The zFCP dialog supports NPIV-enabled devices¶
The “Add zFCP” dialog supports NPIV-enabled zFCP devices. NPIV-enabled devices are activated just by using the device ID. The kernel module will detect the WWPNs and LUNs and bring all the devices up automatically. This means the user doesn’t have to provide the WWPN and LUN IDs. See the pull request.
The timezone map doesn’t show borders¶
Anaconda is not showing timezone borders in the Time & Date spoke. The map is white now. See the bug 2103657
Changes in the kickstart support¶
Prompt for a missing passphrase in GUI¶
If the kickstart file defines a partitioning that requires a passphrase, the graphical user interface shows a dialog that allows users to provide the missing passphrase. The installation automatically continues after the passphrase is provided. It works the same way in the text user interface. See the pull request.
rootpw --allow-ssh
is supported¶
Use the --allow-ssh
option of rootpw
kickstart command to allow remote logins of the
root user via SSH using only the password. This is disabled by default for the security reasons,
so be aware of risks. See the pull request
and the Fedora Change
for the default behaviour.
zfcp --devnum=
is supported¶
The zfcp
kickstart command supports NPIV-enabled zFCP devices. NPIV-enabled devices are
activated just by using the device ID. The kernel module will detect the WWPNs and LUNs and
bring all the devices up automatically. This means the user doesn’t have to provide the WWPN
and LUN IDs:
zfcp --devnum=<device_number>
See the pull request for more info.
Changes in Anaconda options¶
inst.gpt
is deprecated¶
Use the inst.disklabel
boot option to specify a preferred disk label type. Specify gpt
to prefer creation of GPT disk labels. Specify mbr
to prefer creation of MBR disk labels if
supported. The inst.gpt
boot option is deprecated and will be removed in future releases.
See the pull request.
Changes in Anaconda configuration files¶
The gpt
option is replaced¶
The default value of the preferred disk label type is specified by the disk_label_type
option in the Anaconda configuration files. The gpt
configuration option is no longer
supported. See the pull request.
The decorated_window
option is removed¶
The decorated_windows
option is removed from Anaconda’s configuration files.
It was never requested and we have no evidence that it was used.
See the pull request.
The enable_ignore_broken_packages
option is removed¶
The enable_ignore_broken_packages
option in Anaconda’s configuration files is removed.
The pykickstart decides whether the %packages --ignorebroken
feature is supported or not.
See the pull request.
The blivet_gui_supported
option is removed¶
The support for Blivet-GUI will be disabled automatically if it is not installed.
Use the hidden_spokes
option of the User Interface
section to disable it explicitly.
See the pull request.
The can_detect_unsupported_hardware
and can_detect_support_removed
options were removed¶
The support for detection of unsupported hardware is no longer available. See the pull request for more info.
Fedora 36¶
General changes¶
The help support is unified¶
The help support on RHEL and Fedora uses new mapping files with a unified format. The mappings files are located in the root of the help directory. For example for RHEL, they are expected to be at:
/usr/share/anaconda/help/rhel/anaconda-gui.json
/usr/share/anaconda/help/rhel/anaconda-tui.json
The mapping files contain data about the available help content.
The UI screens are identified by a unique screen id returned by
the get_screen_id
method, for example installation-summary
.
The help content is defined by a relative path to a help file and
(optionally) a name of an anchor in the help file.
For example:
{
"_comment_": [
"This is a comment",
"with multiple lines."
],
"_default_": {
"file": "default-help.xml",
"anchor": "",
},
"installation-summary": {
"file": "anaconda-help.xml",
"anchor": "",
},
"user-configuration": {
"file": "anaconda-help.xml",
"anchor": "creating-a-user-account"
}
}
The default_help_pages
configuration option is removed. The helpFile
attribute is removed
from the UI classes. See the pull request for more info.
Changes in the graphical interface¶
Users are administrators by default¶
In the User spoke, the “Make this user administrator” checkbox is now checked by default. This improves installation experience for users who do not know and need to rely on the default values to guide them. See the Users are admins by default change.
Keyboard configuration is disabled on Live media with Wayland¶
The keyboard switching in the Anaconda installer on the Live media did not behave as expected on Wayland based environments (#2016613). When users changed the keyboard layout configuration that configuration was reflected in the Live environment. However, if users pressed modifier keys (CTRL or SHIFT) the keyboard specified by the Anaconda installer was changed back for the Live environment. That is the result of how the Wayland protocol handles keyboard layout.
To avoid this unexpected behavior Anaconda will no longer control keyboard layout configuration of the Live systems on Wayland Live environment. The keyboard configuration set by Anaconda on the Live environment will be reflected only to the installed system. This means that users have to pay attention that their passwords are written by the correct layout in the installer running inside the Live environment to be able to use the password in the system after installation.
Changes in the kickstart support¶
The %anaconda section is removed¶
The support for the deprecated %anaconda section is removed. Use Anaconda configuration files instead.
ANA_INSTALL_PATH is deprecated¶
The ANA_INSTALL_PATH environment variable is deprecated. The support for this variable will be removed in future releases. Use the /mnt/sysroot path in your kickstart scripts instead. See the Installation mount points documentation.
Changes in Anaconda options¶
inst.nompath is deprecated¶
The inst.nompath boot option is deprecated. It has not been doing anything useful for some time already.
Changes in Anaconda configuration files¶
Saving Anaconda’s data to target system¶
Anaconda configuration file format now includes additional options to control what is saved to the target system.
The options are:
# Should we copy input kickstart to target system?
can_copy_input_kickstart = True
# Should we save kickstart equivalent to installation settings to the new system?
can_save_output_kickstart = True
# Should we save logs from the installation to the new system?
can_save_installation_logs = True
The default values above cause no change in behavior, the new options are only another way to configure the behavior.
Fedora 35¶
General changes¶
Limited support for braille devices¶
The Server image (boot.iso) now contains the brltty accessibility software. This means that some braille output devices can be automatically detected and used. This feature works only in text mode, started with the inst.text boot option. See the bug.
Visible warnings in initrd¶
Installation shows critical warnings raised in Dracut/initrd again when Anaconda is starting or when Dracut starts to timeout. This should help users to resolve installation issues by avoiding that the important message was scrolled out too fast. See the bug.
Changes in the graphical interface¶
New look of the NTP server dialog¶
The NTP server dialog has been redesigned. The new look uses more traditional approach to management of lists (such as in hexchat). See the pull request.
The set of controls to add a new server is no longer present. Instead, a “blank” new server is added by clicking an “add” button. The details can be filled in by editing the server in the list, as was already possible.
The method to remove a server is now more intuitive. Users can simply click the “remove” button and the server is instantly removed from the list. Previously, users had to uncheck the “Use” checkbox for the server in the list and confirm the dialog.
New look of the root configuration screen¶
The root configuration screen has been redesigned and is no longer ambiguous. All root account options are visible only if root account is enabled. The new layout also contains text to let users understand their choices. See the pull request.
Changes in the text interface¶
The packaging log in tmux
tabs¶
Add a new tab to the tmux
session starting the Anaconda installer. This new tab will follows
the /tmp/packaging.log
log file. This change should make it easier for users to spot software
installation errors. See the pull request.
Changes in Anaconda configuration files¶
Replacement of product configuration files¶
The support for the product configuration files was removed and replaced with profiles. See the Fedora change and the documentation.
Each profile can be identified by a unique id and it can define additional options for
the automated profile detection. The profile will be chosen based on the inst.profile
boot option, or based on the ID
and VARIANT_ID
options of the os-release files.
The profile configuration files are located in the /etc/anaconda/profile.d/
directory.
The inst.product
and inst.variant
boot options are deprecated.
Options for Anaconda DBus module activation¶
We have introduced new configuration options that affect the detection and activation of
the Anaconda DBus modules. Use the activatable_modules
option to specify Anaconda DBus
modules that can be activated. Use the forbidden_modules
option to specify modules that
are not allowed to run. Use the optional_modules
to specify modules that can fail to run
without aborting the installation.
The DBus modules can be specified by a DBus name or by a prefix of the name that ends with an asterisk. For example:
org.fedoraproject.Anaconda.Modules.Timezone
org.fedoraproject.Anaconda.Addons.*
The addons_enabled
and kickstart_modules
options are deprecated and will be removed
in the future.
See the pull request.