On Wed, Jan 10, 2001 at 12:07:51AM -0800, Joey Hess wrote:
> Anthony Towns wrote:
> > The debconf frontend should really be passed through to the udeb frontend;
> > the keymap should already have been determined.
> Right. How we do that with dpkg and random postinst scripts scribbling
> all over the display, I'm not sure. perhaps you preconfigure everything
> first (with their debconf protocol output/input just passing through to
> the cdebconf frontend), then when you actually install the stuff you
> redirect it to tty3?
Sure. I'd do this now (open up a dummy xterm or something, say), except
that I don't have any way of separating debconf and stdio. Should we
just add support for the unix socket forwarding stuff to cdebconf and
debconf-tiny [0], do you think?
> > This reason makes the most sense to me. So, basically, configuration should
> > go like:
> > * ask just enough questions to build a self-sufficient system &
> > install it
> > * boot said system
> > * ask the remainder of the questions
> > * install the system
> Right.
And `ask the remainder of the questions' would be something like:
* standard / custom install?
(a) tasksel
(b) console-apt [1]
* apt
- download everything (wait)
- dpkg-preconfigure everything
Well, in theory, anyway.
> > * devices stuff. difficult. would go away with devfs on b-f's :)
> Maybe MAKEDEV should be required to make that stuff on installation if
> it doesn't exist? Or does it need to exist earlier?
MAKEDEV is *very* slow. *VERY* slow. If you rm the dev.tgz, and run
create_chroot.sh without chrooting into a d-i system, you should be able
to see just how slow. Only thing I can think of that'd be reasonable
would be makedev-udeb packages which know how to make exactly the devices
needed for whichever arch they're built on.
> > * lilo needs a real fstab to configure properly, should go away
> > when plugged into an installer
> > * the essential pkgs install is:
> > - unpack everything manually
> > + lie to dpkg and tell it it's installed
> > + forcefully add base-files, base-passwd, ldso
> base-passwd?
Hrm, dpkg might want to be able to lookup the uid for the usernames of
the files it unpacks?
> > + forcefully add dpkg
> > + forcefully add libc6 (which likes to have a timezone, or
> > it'll prompt)
> I wonder if there's something clean that can be done instead of
> special-casing it? Make it ue debconf and have the debconf prompt be a
> sufficiently low level so the user does not see it, then reconfigure the
> timezone stuff after the reboot?
Isn't the timezone asked earlier anyway? If it is (and still is with d-i),
then we can just use that answer.
> > + forcefully add perl-5.005 (and take care of its symlink)
> > - install debconf-tiny
> > - preconfigure everything
> > - install everything, in the knowledge that all they're
> > dependencies are already unpacked, even if dpkg doesn't
> > know this
> That last one is pretty nasty. Do you really have to force *everything*?
> Is it worth considering faking dpkg out with a dummy status file (udpkg
> could do that)?
Hmm? I don't see the point: adding the --force just disables the Depends:
checks, because I know I've already installed everything that every
required package depends on. Adding status entries would just work around
the dependency checks too. And I mean, these are all essential packages
(or things essential packages depend on), so most of the dependencies
don't need to be stated anyway.
I install the important (not required) packages without doing any forcing
at all, otoh. (Hence the "base packages can't pre-depend on non-required
packages" requirement)
> > There's some other special cases in there that've been fixed since potato
> > too, actually; the ldconfig.new stuff eg.
> Well that's encouraging anyway. Do you have a sid version yet?
I did at one point. It basically just needs adjusting for perl-5.6 and
debconf instead of debconf-tiny. woody's much easier to proxy for too. :)
Cheers,
aj
[0] Or something to that effect. Since the real debconf is likely to have
to wait until the perl mess is resolved before being reliable, I might
for debconf-tiny until then even. Or not. We'll see.
[1] Is console-apt the way to go, or should we stick with dselect?
--
Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred.
``Thanks to all avid pokers out there''
-- linux.conf.au, 17-20 January 2001
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