Re: Debian Boot Floppies CVS: . ezanard

[Enrique Zanardi <ezanardi@ull.es>]

On Tue, Dec 29, 1998 at 07:37:39PM -0500, Adam Di Carlo wrote:
> "ezanard" == ezanard  <ezanard@master.debian.org> writes:
> > Log message: - Added support for loop and NFS mounted partitions. If
> > the user ahs mounted one of those, libfdisk will detect it (parsing
> > /etc/mtab) and add it to the linked lists.  - Added a new function,
> > fdisk_find_partition_by_mntpoint.  - Renamed fdisk_find_partition to
> > fdisk_find_partition_by_name
> 
> Can someone explain it to me so I can describe it?
> 
> Is it just the standard dinstall stuff, compatability for nfs
> mounting, for base2_1.tgz ?  Or is this for NFS root installs?  I'll
> need instructions on how to NFS root too if possible, although AFAIK,
> this is only supported (tftp) on sparc?

libfdisk is a little library used for dbootstrap (the tool previously
known as dinstall) to know which partitions to show on various dialog
boxes (mount/initialize/umount a partition), and to know that there are
some partitions mounted on some places (to know that we have mounted a
target partition, or activated a swap partition). 

As libfdisk now detects loop-mounted and NFS-mounted partitions,
dbootstrap will allow us to used them to install on a loop fs, or on a
NFS-mounted partition. It will also accept them as rootfs. 

As libfdisk detects those partitions parsing /etc/mtab, the partition has
to be mounted previously to be detected. Currently dboostrap doesn't have
an option to let the user mount a loop fs, or a NFS volume, so the user
will have to do that manually on a shell (the one in tty2, or the one
that can be called from the menu).

That functionality overlaps with previous patches by Eric Delaunay for
sparc, where he added code to dbootstrap for detecting NFS-mounted
partitions, and using them for NFS-root installs.
 
Currently, NFS-root installs are supported on sparc only, but, as most of
the code is arch-independent, it may be easily used by other arches.
(TODO-list item for boot-floppies_2.1.5?) 

Now that we are talking about documentation, there's another change I
would like you to document. In this version, stderr is redirected to tty3
while on "newt-mode". That means the user may switch to that VC and see
the error messages, they won't appear under the dialog boxes on tty1.

	Thanks,
--
Enrique Zanardi					   ezanardi@ull.es