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Re: Debian Hurd Base system



M.C. Vernon wrote:
> 
> Is there a single .tar.gz containing all the .debs and so on, that would
> save my trying to get all the .debs? and is it on a European mirror?

Marcus made tar file recently. For details, read the yuoted message.
There is a mirror of alpha.gnu.org in uk:

ftp://sunsite.doc.ic.ac.uk/pub/Mirrors/alpha.gnu.org

-- Matthias

---------quoted Mail of Marcus Brinkmann 99/01/04-----------------------


Hello,

I have finished the Debian GNU/Hurd base packages and want to share them
with you!

The installation is quite simple. Make sure you have a GRUB boot disk
first[1]. Then, create your hurd partition with "mke2fs -o hurd
/dev/???",
where ??? is the device file of your partition. The base packages take
30MB,
so you want a bit more :)

After mounting the partition, for example at /gnu, you have two options:

a)  I did upload a tar file (9.5 MB) named
    alpha.gnu.org/pub/gnu/hurd/contrib/marcus/gnu-19990104.tar.gz
    md5sum: 8db6c7ccc4b1b8674014b82de9dd0e52 9536753 gnu-19990104.tar.gz

   Then you just need to fetch it and do
    cd /gnu; tar -xpzvf path/to/gnu-19990104.tar.gz

   Boot your Hurd partition with the GRUB disk. Done.

b) Collect the necessary packages[2] and put them in a single directory,
   together with the "cross-install", "native-install" and "dpkg-hurd"
   scripts from alpha.gnu.org/pub/gnu/hurd/contrib/marcus.

   Then run
    ./cross-install /gnu
 
   After the script has finished, you can boot the Hurd and run
    ./native-install

   Done. Reboot (not necessary, but still), and enjoy.

For everybody who has still gnu-0.2 and don't want to risk a new
install,
you can TRY to fetch the dpkg tar file from my contrib directory on
alpha.gnu.org (see above). Maybe you need the new libc, too. This way
you
can gradually move to a Debian system, but you are on your own here,
sorry.

For the people who are not common with dpkg, here are some
commands for a quick start:

dpkg -i file.deb                      # install file.deb
dpkg -i --force-architecture file.deb # install even if architecture is
wrong
dpkg -r file.deb                      # remove file.deb
dpkg --purge file.deb                 # (remove file.deb and)
configuration files
dpkg -s file                          # status of package file?
dpkg --print-avail file               # what version of package file is
available?
dpkg -l [pattern]                     # list all known packages
(matching
                                      # pattern) and their status
dpkg -L file                          # Which files does package file
contain?
dpkg -S some/file                     # Which packages do contain
some/file?

You can also try "dselect", although it's not great. We are working on a
replacement for it.

Known problems:
* because we don't have file locking, password activities are not
working
  (because <shadow.h> lckpwd does not work). We can change the sources
and
  remove the locking, but locking is used so often, it would be useful
to
  implement it (hint, hint :) Note that I already removed the locking
from
  dpkg and install-info, so running two dpkg's parallel is asking for
trouble!
* Perl needs to be packaged proper.
* You need always "--force-architecture" under the Hurd. Explanation:
  dpkg THINKS the hurd is a "i386" system, which is true, but i386 in
Debian
  mean i386-linux-gnu, and not i386-gnu. I can hack around this in dpkg
and
  upload a new version. Not today, though (it's late). It's not a big
  problem anyway.
* I will leave it to you to add some further configuration. Here some
tips:

  eval $(lesspipe)      allows it to look at Debian packages with "less
*.deb"
                        (and many other things, for example compressed
files)

  Setup TERM=mach all over the place.

  Edit boot/servers.boot to use a pager device.

Please let me know if you have any problems with the packages or the
installation script.

Links:
http://www.debian.org/                          Main web page of Debian
http://www.gnu.org/                             Main web page of GNU
http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd.html
http://master.debian.org/~brinkmd/hurd/

Archives:
ftp://ftp.debian.org                            Debian ftp archive, see
[2]
ftp://alpha.gnu.org/pub/gnu/hurd/               Main GNU Hurd archive,
                                /contrib/marcus my directory there.

Thank you,
Marcus

[1] somewhere on alpha.gnu.org/pub/gnu/hurd
[2] a list of good packages is at the top of "cross-install".
    Note that the latest bash (which you NEED), is not installed in the
    Debian ftp archive yet. (slang, too)
    Hurd packages are installed below
     ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/unstable/main/binary-hurd-i386/
-------------------------------end quote--------


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