F39 Simplified-Installer reports a failure, brings up emergency shell - then continues installation without issue

[pcdubs]

Describe the bug

When using a Fedora 39 Simplified-Installer to install to a device, there is a failure and the system drops to a dracut emergency shell- then continues on and performs a successful installation:

To Reproduce
Please describe the steps needed to reproduce the bug:

1. Create a Fedora simplified-installer
2. Provision a device.

Expected behavior
No error, no dracut shell.

Screenshots

From the logs:

Oct 13 16:50:02 fedora dracut-mount[714]: Warning: Can't mount root filesystem
Oct 13 16:50:02 fedora systemd[1]: Starting dracut-emergency.service - Dracut Emergency Shell...

Additional context

After installation, using coreos.inst.skip_reboot to stop the system from rebooting :

[miabbott]

@7flying have you encountered this recently in your tests?

Overall, we need someone to validate this problem is still occurring with F39 and F40

[7flying]

This (the error from the first screenshot) is still happening in my latest tests in Fedora 39.

[pcdubs]

Error from the first screenshot still happens in F40, but it does continue with the installation and successfully reboots into f40.

[mmartinv]

This still happens in F41 and it looks like it's because the dracut-mount.service is activated by the presence of /lib/dracut/hooks/01-mount-overlayfs.sh file which is generated by the overlayfs dracut module. This file does not exist in RHEL simplified installer images and is present in F39 F40 and F41.

The overlayfs dracut module is required by livenet and dmsquash-live so removing them from the list of the dracut modules to be installed fixes the issue (I also added the overlayfs dracut module to the list of modules to be omitted just to make sure the module is not included but I think it's not actually needed).

I am not sure we need livnet and dmsquash-live for the coreos-installer but it looks like the configuration is shared by the anaconda and the coreos installers so removing them from the list is not going to be the final solution.

[achilleas-k]

I am not sure we need livnet and dmsquash-live for the coreos-installer but it looks like the configuration is shared by the anaconda and the coreos installers so removing them from the list is not going to be the final solution.

From my point of view, this is the core of it all. If we (you) don't care about the functionality these modules provide for the simplified-installer, then we should just remove them.

This might also be a good opportunity to review all the modules we include and trim some fat.