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Re: base*.tgz is gone, and why it's gone



On Sat, Jun 16, 2001 at 10:21:23PM -0800, Ethan Benson wrote:

> On Sun, Jun 17, 2001 at 12:06:21AM -0600, Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
> > I have frequently had to do installs on machines with ethernet cards that
> > are not supported by the boot disks, invariably this is either solved
> > using a 'boot from linuxcare cd' or 'boot from windows' and using a
> > temporary filesystem. 
> 
> which is what a tarball of debs would solve.  something like:
> 
> debootstrap --download-only woody /var/tmp/debootstrap http://http.us.debian.org
> 
> then you get /var/tmp/debootstrap filled with about 50 .debs, run 
> (cd /var/tmp/debootstrap ; tar -zcf ../base.tgz .)

Except that the resulting base.tgz would contain a bunch of .debs, which is not
easily transformable into a usable chroot environment (which is what I believe
Jason wants) except on a Debian system of the target architecture, which is not
always available.

> > debbootstrap sounds great, but it is essiantial that all files needed
> > for install are fetchable with out excessive trouble using standard
> > netscape/IE.
> 
> i tend to agree, but the only way that is possible is if we support a
> tarball aquisition method, such as i have proposed above.  with my
> proposal it would be trivial for the base.tgz to be updated on a
> regular basis, it could even be triggered by/after the dinstall runs. 

It should be possible for an automated process (running on various
architectures) to periodically build "traditional" base.tgz's using debootstrap
and a Debian mirror, and make them available for download.  How does it help to
use an intermediate tarball as you have proposed?

-- 
 - mdz



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