Re: debinst: target media preperation
On Fri, Sep 15, 2000 at 09:32:04PM +1100, Glenn McGrath wrote:
> There will have to be different levels of modules for target media
> preperation, here are some possible modules, im not suggesting we need
> them all, just exporing options
Yep, I think it would be good to have a very simple module first just
for testing and having something working.
> Some functionality provided by these modules could be also used in
> acquisition of packages from a local filesystem
Perhaps we could even check if there is a Debian installation already
and use some info from there as default? Just dreaming... :)
0) Detect mass storage controllers (okay, that's most probably another step)
> 1) Hardware detection of possible targets to install to.
> Detect all drives, removable drives etc. could be split from libdetect
> or a custom job based on kernel detection from dmesg, or devfs.
> 2) Partition preperation
> Functionality
> detect
> create
> delete
> resize?
Would be nice to have and I think we get it for free if using libparted,
right? No more FIPS before installation. I think that is the hardest part
of our installation currently which stops Windows users...
> Different partition types
> acorn
> amiga : libfdisk
> atari : libfdisk
> ibm
> mac : libfdisk, libparted
> msdos : libfdisk, libparted
> osf : libfdisk
> pc98? : libparted
> sgi
> sun : libfdisk
> ultrix
Hmm, too bad there is no library which supports all of them currently :(
The right way to do it would be to extend libparted to do all of them
IMHO. Do you think we could get somebody to work on that? Sadly I don't
know anything about it which could be helpful.
> Special partition types
> loop : libparted
How does libparted support loop-devices?
> ramfs
> md (raid)
> lvm
I think LVM should be another module started after partitioning. It would
have to detect the partition types and check if any partitions have the
LVM type. If there are no LVM partitions you should not see that module
until explicitly requested.
> There is no one tool that can do the job here, modules could be based
> on debians libfdisk, parted, other fdisk style programs, individual
> tools will likely be required to deal with any md or lvm partitions.
I would say extend parted to be able to do all partitioning work and write
modules for LVM and MD. The nice thing about all this is that it will be
usable outside of the installer.
> 3) Filesystem preperation
>
> Ext2
> Fat
> HFS
> Minix
> NTFS
> ReiserFS
> Swap
NTFS? I don't think we really need that ;-) BTW: I think parted can do most
of that work but I am not sure if it uses any external programs for it.
> It will take a bit of organising to get this area working smoothly, but
> i think the modular way we are aproaching it should work well, probably
> the biggest area of concern is co-ordination user input with the various
> seperate modules.
ACK. And a partitioning tool that works on all architectures the same way
would be helpful for everybody.
Thanks
Torsten
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