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Installation

Anaconda Changes

This section covers changes in the Anaconda installer, including changes in the graphical and text mode interactive installers, Kickstart, and installer boot options.

Changes in the Graphical Interface

  • When setting up a root account, you can now lock it in the graphical interface.

  • Time and date controls are used to set the System Clock on the current system. This is not allowed in live installations, so they are now hidden on live installs.

Changes in the Text Mode Interface

  • The TUI now always shows the quit message. (BZ#1686116)

Kickstart Changes

  • The installclass Kickstart command has been removed and replaced with the inst.product= and inst.variant= boot options.

  • The repo and url commands now support new options: --sslcert, --sslclientcert, and --sslclientkey, for accessing repositories. See upstream documentation for details.

Changes in Anaconda Boot Options

  • New boot options: inst.product= and inst.variant=. See upstream documentation for details.

  • New boot option inst.addrepo= is now available to configure additional repositories. The option is functionally similar to inst.repo=.

  • If you use the zfcp.allow_lun_scan option, the setting will now be preserved on the installed system. (BZ#1561662)

Other Anaconda Changes

  • Anaconda now uses a configuration file to share its settings between all modules. The file is generated by Anaconda from the following sources:

    • Default configuration stored in /etc/anaconda/anaconda.conf

    • Drop directory: /etc/anaconda/conf.d/*.conf

    • Product configuration: /etc/anaconda/product.d/*.conf

    • Boot and command line options

  • Installclasses have been removed, and replaced with configuration files in /etc/anaconda/product.d.

  • Support for the Storage module is significantly enhanced. The module is able to scan system storage and provide info about available devices. It is also able to set up, validate and apply a partitioning via DBus, however, Anaconda still uses its local storage object to do that. Storage-related code has been refactored and simplified.

  • Live-installation-specific files and dependencies are now provided by the package anaconda-live.

  • The maximum size of the root partition on Fedora Workstation has been increased to 70 GiB.

  • Fixed the Anaconda-generated /etc/fstab where swap space was mistakenly specified as swap instead of none. (BZ#1258322)

  • Non-ASCII characters are now allowed in passphrases again. Anaconda will show a warning when using one. (BZ#1619813)

  • Cryptsetup now uses LUKS2 by default. See the Security section for details. (BZ#1668013)

  • The installer will now show a warning when it detects an existing volume that should be reformatted, such as a separate /var. (BZ#1575131)

  • Anaconda recreates the initrds by calling new-kernel-pkg or dracut. However, dracut doesn’t invoke zipl on s390x, so we have to do it to fix the bootloader. (BZ#1652727)

  • The storage checker will now report an error if the user tries to use LDL DASD disks for the installation on s390x. (BZ#1635825)

  • Network configuration related functionality was moved almost completely to the Network module. The module now provides information about network devices supported by the installer, signal for network device configuration changes that can be handled by UI. Tasks related to network configuration initialization in installer and final configuration of the target system are also performed by the module now.

Improved installation of localization packages

In the past, installation of localization packages (l10n) to provide fonts and translations for a language was done using comps groups. This has been replaced by "rich dependencies" in individual langpack packages. For example, installing langpacks-ja pulls in some CJK fonts and two input method plugins, but only if the packages for those input methods are installed. The new mechanism is more flexible and easier to maintain.