Re: debian-installer: disk partitioner
> I haven't been able to do concrete work yet. But I'm still interested in it,
> so we can work together.
great.
>
> > I've also seen conflicting info on how it should probably be done. I've seen
> > libparted and libfdisk suggested, I'm not sure that people came to a conclusion
> > as to which one to go with.
> >
>
> Yes, that's true. I suggest let's not hurry it too much. What about first
> looking into the design part of things to set up which one we should be using?
>
> I will do the homework, looking at the libs and then let's go on with what
> exactly the features will be. Then we can code it.
Definately a good aproach. At first glance libparted would be great if it
wasn't so large. I like the idea of being able to resize partitions, which I
think it does, and I don't think libfdisk does. But I do want to be able to
install off a single floppy.
The approach I'd like to take is to design the partitioner with an eye towards
making a small udeb that does only the basics (not resizing perhaps), but have
the option of having a larger udeb that would be fully featured. The smaller
one goes on the single floppy, the larger on the CD, depending on relative size
and room.
> >
>
> Another thing that might be slowing me down is that I still don't have a
> debian account and I probably won't be able to commit stuff directly.
Feel free to send me patches, in fact, I don't have an account either, but I
have write access to the debian-boot archive. Talk to Joey Hess or Adam Di
Carlo (I think) about getting write access.
> Topics in addition to choosing the library for part. functionality:
>
> - partition resizing
not really necessary, depending on size concerns, but maybe a requirement
for the fully featured (CD) install.
> - unattended install (implies disk size/block size detection, etc)
> - selecting /home, /var, etc
Some though needs to go into how to automatically select partitions if the user
doesn't want to do it. Here are some assumptions (just for discussion, not sure
if this makes sense):
1. If we are automatically selecting partitions then we don't have to worry
about clobbering a second OS. (Perhaps spit out an error if we find a FAT or UFS
filesystem and warn the user about it?)
2. We want to use up all the space available, and here are some constraints we
can discuss, assuming we have X megabytes to play with, and ignoring how things
are spread across multiple disks for the moment:
/ : 0.3*X, but must be at least 30 Mb, no reason to make it more than 500 Mb
/var : 0.3*X, must be at least 100 Mb, upper limit of 500 Mb
/usr : 0.3*X, must be at least 300Mb, upper limit of 3 Gb
/home : everything else, no upper limit
I know the redhat install will automatically partition for you, perhaps I'll
look at how they choose to divide it up.
> - partition templates
I don't know what this means.
> - interface with formatter (or should that be in the partitioner?)
The formatter should be a separate module. The only thing that needs to be
communicated is /etc/fstab, right? We right it to the RAM disk? And perhaps
that is how the partitioner's menutest knows it is done, an /etc/fstab exists on
the RAM disk.
> up a test system at home so we can test it well; it'll have a spare
> harddisk...
Sounds good.
-David
Reply to: