tis 2003-08-05 klockan 09.21 skrev Goswin Brederlow: > 1. One can create a seemingly writeable loopback filesystem on CD. The > CD holds a readonly loopback file and one can create a snapshot of > that together with a ramdisk or shmfs (or on newer kernels a file > on tmpfs). Any writes to the loopback file then go into the ramdisk > and are lost on reboot. I have a CD image with a 100% normal woody > system on it with a initrd that sets such a snapshot up. Works like > a charme. This sounds really neat. Stackable file systems, yay. > With this instead of installing all (selected) udebs into a big > ramdisk the udebs can be preinstalled into a loopback file upon cd > creation and mounted this way to reduce the ram consumtion a > lot. No complicated linkfarms would be neccessary. It would also > instantly have all udebs unpacked already so its faster too. The > Installer would then just run the postinst files when an udeb is > selected. Okay, so how would it work for net installs? floppy installs? (with floppy install I mean boot from floppy, load either CD drivers or NIC drivers from floppy/floppies and then proceed with CD or net install) Have you looked in cvs.debian.org/debian-installer/doc/scenarios.txt? It is very important that our design fits all or at least most of the installation scenarios, I think it will be a pain to have one design for CD installs and another for net installs. Then add that we might need a separate design for a GUI installer, and we may end up juggling three or four designs... Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of reducing the ramdisk size, but I don't see how it would work for a net install... Another thing, I don't think it's a good idea to actually have "all udebs unpacked already", because "all" udebs will be a lot of them... For example, on a CD install you will rarely need to configure the network, so the network udebs should not be unpacked automatically. For simple installs, there's no reason to have lvm/raid/evms unpacked automatically, it will unnecessarily clutter the menu. > 2. The CD could contain a knoppix like live filesystem that > autodetects most stuff and asks questions about the rest and thus > configures itself. Then once the harddisk is partitioned and > formated the running live filesystem can be transfered over to > harddisk on the fly in the background and the user can just keep on > working all the time and doesn't need to reboot even once. Rebootless install? Eek. I think it would be nice to be able to reboot the more specific kernel for your system than continuing to use the udeb kernel... > 3. When repartitioning a harddisk one has to reboot if any partition > is in use to let changes take affect. Using lvm the partition can > be mapped seperatly and those mappings can be changed in > userspace. One can also move partitions around in the background > with lvm and even have a resume feature when the system crashes > inbetween (provided there is some space to store resume > infos). IIRC evms has some of those features already. But how often will a partition be in use when you partition it from an installer? I don't understand your point, but then, I don't know anything about lvm. > 4. And another realy strange feature: Multi-install. One can stick say > 8 harddisks into one system, boot the debian-installer and set > those harddrives up as mirrors of each other. Then one installs as > allways and when done distributes the harddisks to 8 computers to > get 8 identical systems. Ok, realy strange features but might be > usefull for pool installs. Maybe network block devices could be > used instead of removing the disks. Heh, cute. This could be useful, but even more useful is to have a recreatable installation scenario so you can just put a floppy or a CD in a machine, or even better PXE boot it and it just installs with predefined values. > A test CD image with the woody live cd is available on > rsync://mrvn.homeip.net/images/ > but beware, its a DSL line so the 50MB bz2 will take ages. Well, I might as well start downloading it while at work... /Martin -- Martin Sjögren martin@strakt.com Phone: +46 (0)31 7490880 Cell: +46 (0)739 169191 GPG key: http://www.strakt.com/~martin/gpg.html
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