HowTo: Rebase to a uBlue image from Fedora

Some images don’t have an installer, like the COSMIC variant, or the ISO is outdated.

:warning: NOTE
When switching from a known good image to another one, use this command to permanently save the known good image, before running other commands:
sudo ostree admin pin 0

[see the instructions here]

[You find the list of available images here]

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Nice guide, though number 3 is numbered as 2 there.

As a note, if you do rebase to ublue, there may be issues rebasing back to Fedora. I think the main issue was Bazzite, as I’ve once rebased from Aurora, to Bazzite, then back to Aurora which resulted in a black screen when I rebooted.

I’m sure it’s just something in the config that I could revert, but be careful nonetheless. Just because the OS is Atomic, doesn’t mean everything in the OS is Atomic.

Yeah it should also be noted that we don’t support this.

hm, I get the classic phrase, but are there specific issues?

Just pin the current system, rebase and see? Is this about mutable state in /etc or /var where there are no upgrade paths?

The system files should be cleanly swapped out, and yafti should take care of the user things

I don’t think YAFTI’s been in play for at least a year.

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The main reason isn’t just technical. Generally speaking it works, the main reason is support and expectations. No one is sitting there testing this over every iteration of everything. So this is a scope issue, one of those “no is temporary, yes is forever”.

If a bunch of people show up to test it all and deal with support and fixes then it’d be a different story. But like, who would want to sign up for this? I would hate doing this I’d be so miserable. For free too? This is also why we don’t do it, most of us installed the OS and left it there – cloud native is about making the decision earlier, shifting left, blah blah. :smile:

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Hmm… multiple things.

The COSMIC image has no up to date ISO.

Do you test all new ISO installs?

Would it make sense to add the second “rebase to signed” command to ujust? It might be confusing but would be useful for the mentioned method

cosmic doesn’t have ISOs it’s just a test repo. I can’t speak to who is testing ISOs but probably not all of them.

The rebase-helper handles the rebasing and signing the user doesn’t need to pick one or the other it always puts them on the signed image.

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I just found the other instructions for the base images, so no need for duplication