System recovery mode

General
1

This may be something more to raise with the Fedora project; in any case, I know that a lot of users would benefit from a recovery partition. The ability to erase and reinstall the Bluefin or resize the partitions for example without creating an installer USB would be very valuable.

This functionality could be provided via a partition or UKI.

Keen to hear thoughts.

2

Due to how ublue functions I don’t think a recovery partition really brings any benefits.

  1. its image based so root shouldn’t break.
  2. A"reinstall" would basically just be wiping the user. (Also pull over default etc files back into /etc)
  3. The system holds 2 images by default and will automatically fall back (or one can manually fallback) if the system doesn’t boot. This 2nd working image kinda acts as a recovery state
  4. ublue uses btrfs so there’s only 3 real partions (1 for boot one for efi and the other for btrfs). The largest, btrfs, doesn’t have any hard partition sizes om the default config.

On a more personal note, I’ve never hit a fail state I couldn’t recover from so I wouldn’t want to waste the storage space for a recovery partition that I’d basically never use. The only usecase would be to quickly reset to a fresh install but at that point I could A make a script or B just use a USB.

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3

I think it’s helpful to be able to perform a secure erase of a disk and return it to a stock “OEM” state without the need of a USB, that way:

  • data is gone and unrecoverable
  • no experience is required for creating a USB
  • a laptop could be handed off to a friend or family member with less technical experience

More over it would

  • increase accessibility
  • be friendlier for vendors

I believe it is still possible for the OS to break, somehow, as it is software. In any case, the main thing I’d like to get at is wiping and resetting.

4

Right now Bluefin does the OEM style install by default.

We have looked at how to support a factory reset from a logged in system. Upstream bootc is also looking at supporting a factory reset as well from a logged in system.

Doing it from a dedicated partition seems unlikely given that we have rollbacks and booting into the initramfs.

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