Re: Preparing for the freeze (was: Obsolete packages in main/oldlibs)

[Thomas Behrndt <thmsb@eangach.apana.org.au>]

> > PS Would it be worth me bringing a UDB from home to a network to test
> >    installs, etc before the slink release?  I'm prepared to put some
> >    time in if it's useful.
> 
> Absolutely. We desperately need documentation, so if you'd like to work on
> that based on your install experiences, I know it would be GREATLY
> appreciated.

I'm using a UDB running the standard kernel from the 5/7/98 disks for
a permanent connection to the internet. This has been up for 23 days.
The network connection drops out occasionally (it's a modem
connection), but I haven't had any problems with the network. Longest
uptime for the connection is about 5 days. It's configured for a subnet
using registered IPs and has one other PC using it as a gateway. The UDB
is not used as a user machine (it only has 16M af RAM), but the other
machine it is used quite a bit. This is a low volume connection due to
bandwidth constraints.

DNS is done using bind as a caching server and the other PC points to
it.

Mail uses smail with nfs mounts for the mail directory and the main
user's ~/Mail directory. There are no problems with this when the
other PC is disconected (happens quite often to use it for other
things). Smail has configuration problems, but this is also in the
i386 slink package.

News is by INN on the other PC, but I am willing to transfer it to
the UDB and try it out. News feed is by SUCK.

Telnet is often used between the two machines.

I haven't setup an ftp server on the UDB, but I have it setup on the
other machine and the UDB uses this for doing Debian updates. The
wu-ftpd package is not available for Debian alpha yet, so if no-one
else is working on it, I'm willing to try to get it working.

I haven't setup a http server, but I'm also willing to give this a
try.

I don't use X on the machine since it is primarily a network gateway
and since it doesn't have enough disk space or memory to make it
worthwhile.

I have also been able to compile a kernel in a previous installation on
this machine, but haven't done it for this one yet.

The main things I miss are:
- ipfwadm
- a milo which doesn't echo to the serial port (I have a modem on this
  and this screws up reboots)

There are some things I think we need to do before we release.  These
are:
- remove the make boot disk and install LILO options from the boot menu
- make MILO available as a package (it doesn't need to install, but it
  should provide a copy which can be intsalled)
- make LINLOAD avialable in a similar way
- provide a kernel package which can be compiled (this can be separate
  from the main kernel package until the standard package works - m68k
  provide a patch package to this)
- get ipfwadm working (again, this can be included in the above special
  package)

Let me know what I can do to help, especially since I have the
permanent connection (note that there are bandwidth restrictions which
will impact how much it can be hit).

Thomas
-- 
Thomas Behrndt
thmsb@eangach.apana.org.au