Re: first weekly debian-installer status report
Vaidhyanathan Mayilrangam wrote:
> > - kernel module udebs [UNCLAIMED]
> > Not started. We will need various sets of kernel modules;
> > one such set is NIC drivers. Each set goes in a udeb; there
> > probably has to be a system to build the whole kernel and
> > udebs.
> I already did some stuff on this and got the different modules built. So if I
> can get the mechanism to build udebs, I can upload them and
> YEAH.. I claim this :)
What are your thought on how this should integrate with our normal
kernel deb building procedure and all that? (If at all?)
Ok, a 5 minute primer on building udebs.
I build udebs by asking debhelper to build a normal .deb, except at the
very last step, I force it to use the ".udeb' extention. The problems
that show up are:
1. dpkg-gencontrol has an annoying habit of guessing what .deb you are
going to build, and listing it in debian/files. This later propigates to
your .changes file, and things blow up since you didn't really build
a .deb. The fix is to tell dpkg-gencontrol to write to some other
file than debian/files, which you then delete/ignore. With debhelper,
I do it like this:
dh_gencontrol -- -fdebian/files~
2. Since dpkg-gencontrol doesn't register the file, you have to do that
manually:
dpkg-distaddfile $(FILENAME) debian-installer $(PRIORITY)
3. And finally you have to generate the package with a .udeb extention,
which looks like this in debhelper (with dpkg-deb -b, you just
specify a full filename, rather than the .. directory).
dh_builddeb --filename=$(FILENAME)
(This --filename switch requires debhelper (>= 2.1.18))
4. The above commands use several handy variables, which I set like so:
PACKAGE=$(shell dh_listpackages)
VERSION=$(shell dpkg-parsechangelog | grep ^Version: | cut -d ' ' -f 2)
ARCH=$(shell dpkg --print-architecture)
FILENAME=$(PACKAGE)_$(VERSION)_$(ARCH).udeb
PRIORITY=$(shell grep ^Priority: debian/control | cut -d ' ' -f 2)
5. Even if you do all this, your dpkg-buildpackage run will fail, unless
you are using the (unreleased) dpkg-dev 1.7.0. The patch is trivial
though.
> > - library reduction [UNCLAIMED]
> > Not started. There is code in the boot-floppies that may
> > be usable, but this is one of the hardest parts.
> > - install media build system [UNCLAIMED]
> > Not started. Puts all the peices together and makes
> > install media.
> I can help with both of the above..
I'm sure we'll need lots of help on these, they are back-burner for now
though.
> PS: I am getting 4 P-133 for building a cluster.. If needed, I can set aside
> one of the machines to test the new installer on.. Let me know..
I'm hoping we can test the first stages in a chroot, and leter stages by
sacrificing nothing but a swap partition from a otherwise unharmed
debian system.
--
see shy jo
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