Testers wanted: New installation method

[Michael Banck <mbanck@debian.org>]

Hello,

I'd like to get some testers for a new installation method. It is based
on Roland's ext2 xattr-hurd patches for Linux-2.6, which enables us to
extract a base tarball with intact passive translators, thus not
requiring native-install. 

This means all you need to do in order to install Debian GNU/Hurd from
GNU/Linux is to extract one tarball, the base packages are already
unpacked, installed and configured afterwards.

Requirements
============

In order to install Debian GNU/Hurd from this tarball, you need the
following prerequisites from http://people.debian.org/~mbanck/xattr-hurd/:

1. A Linux-2.6 kernel running with Roland's xattr-hurd patches. 
 a) I've created one based on the latest standard Debian kernel image,
    it's called kernel-image-2.6.7-1-686_2.6.7-2.1_i386.deb 
 b) At the above location, there is also a
    kernel-patch-xattr-hurd_20040302-1_all.deb in case you want to roll
    your own kernel.
2. The gnu-20040731.tar.bz2 tarball, also located at the above url.
3. The 'star' package.

Installation
============

Just do the following steps:

1. mke2fs -o hurd /dev/foo
2. mount /dev/foo /bar && cd /bar
3. star artype=exustar -xattr -x -v -j -f /baz/gnu-20040731.tar.bz2
4. Modify /bar/etc/fstab according to your needs, especially change the
   root partition[1]
5. If you have the 'attr' package installed , you can check your passive
   translators wiht 'getfattr -d -m "gnu.*" /bar/servers/* /bar/dev/*'

Configuration
=============

1. Add the device files for your partitions to /dev with MAKEDEV[1]
2. I haven't configured anything except for the required tzconfig, which
   I set to CEST. You can change that running 'tzconfig'.
3. Change /bar/etc/hostname and /bar/etc/hosts to your needs.
4. Other stuff

I hope the above will work alright. *Please* follow-up with any
successful or unsuccessful installation attempts! 

If this works out fine, we could think about adding support for
xattr-hurd into crosshurd (i.e. setting up the passive translators while
still on GNU/Linux), in order to save one reboot.


enjoy,

Michael

[1] Sorry, I forgot to create the other hd0s? device nodes in /dev. You
can create one for your root (or additional) partition(s) /dev/hd0sfoo in
the following way (you need the 'attr' package):
1. touch /bar/dev/hd0sfoo
2. chmod 640 /bar/dev/hd0sfoo
3. setfattr -n gnu.translator -v "/hurd/storeio\0hd0sfoo\0" /bar/dev/hd0sfoo