kernel modules (Re: redesigning the debian installer)

[Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org>]

Note that I'm not opposed to websites or whatever that autobuild install
media in the least.

Glenn McGrath wrote:
> Also the user building there own customised installer would logically
> only include modules that apply to them, eg. they wouldnt include an NFS
> modules if they dont intend to install from or too NFS, same with
> detecting different types of hardware e.g. ISA, CDROM etc.

My ideas on this are rather different, but are not refined yet. What I'm
thinking about doing is making each debian-installer module include the
kernel modules it needs (or depend on some other module that has them,
of course).

This means that if you are not doing a NFS install, you can just drop
off the nfs debian-installer module from your install media. Same for a
*lot* of other modules.

> I think enabling heavy end-user customisation is the best chance we have
> of buildign a 1 disk installer. I think it would be very challenging to
> build a 1 disk installer for the masses if your kernel is 1MB leaving
> 400KB left to work with, 400KB would get most of busybox in, but not
> much else.

But see, your kernel will be more like 300kb. It will include no drivers
except enough to get the debian installer up and to get up on the
network.

All other kernel drivers and installer modules will be downloaded (hard
disk drivers, filesystems, etc), and from that point, space metters much
less.

This is why I'm holding out some hope for a single floppy install,
without excessive user customization aside from specifying that they
want to use the single floppy to install from the network.


The main issues this raises is that it makes kernel compilations for the
installer a PITA (because you have to shove the kernel modules into a
buch of different installer modules), and that it means we need an initrd
to boot up the debian system once it is installed (because the kernel
may not even have a disk driver or ext2 filesystem in it).

-- 
see shy jo


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