Re: redesigning the debian installer

[Sebastien Chaumat <schaumat@ens-lyon.fr>]

Martin Keegan wrote:
> 
> On Sat, 23 Sep 2000, Glenn McGrath wrote:
> 
> > > libfdisk is on the improve as well, and the code looks pretty nice, it
> > > could probably be modularised for specific filesystems, only uspports
> > > two architectures at the moment though.
> > >
> > > Glenn
> >
> > Crap, i meant libparted not libfdisk
> 
> Cheers, I'll have a look at that too; I'm more interested in concentrating
> on the logic we're going to have to use to drive any disk-configuring
> robot. I'd like to be able to say:
> 
>   Which disks do you want to install stuff onto?
>   Do you want to keep any partitions on these disks? (ok, which ones)
>   Do you want me to work out where to stick things automaticly? (ooh, goody)


We have a kind of automagical partition system in replicator (in the
script repli-install).
It uses sfdisk internally. You only have to provide lower and upper
bound for the partitions
(and the list of partitions). It adjusts partitions size to "best fit
your choice".

> Then internally you've got to work out how much swap to allocate, and fill
> in all the other blanks which haven't been specified by the user with
> computed values.

 I think this is acheived with our algorithm provided we use as a
parameter the amount of space the user want to allocate to Debian.

Sebastien

PS: www.ens-lyon.fr/~schaumat/replicator/