Re: [debian-installer] Full CDROM install
Le Sat, Aug 11, 2001 at 09:10:42PM -0400, Joey Hess écrivait:
> I had hoped that the first working debian-installer would be able to do
> network installs, and it's not too far away. I think actually that the
> peices it's missing are all required for the cdrom installer
> (partitioning, debootstrap interface). I'll be really happy when we get
> a working cdrom installer (or any working install via d-i). We might
> just get two for the price of one..
Since my first mail I completed my installer. But since I had a very short
time constraint I had to simplify some things.
What i actually have and that may be valuable for debian-installer is :
- a cdrom detection script using a stripped down discover (I have done a
discover udeb but unfortunately Branden Robinson didn't integrate it in
its package even if I asked him), this is commited in tools/cdrom-detect
- an automatic partitionner using libparted (works only for disks having
enough free room, or 1-2 big FAT partitions, and of course msdos disk
labels only)
I'll commit it soon in tools/autpartkit but it will probably need to
be modified since it mounts the partition and writes /etc/fstab.new in the
target directory. And it writes /etc/windows_part with the name of the
bootable windows partition found.
I have several other things but that I don't think they should be used by
debian-installer (they are too hackish) :
- an udeb which does decompress .tar.gz (found in a precise directory of
the CD) in the tmpfs used dor the setup (it is required to extend the
installer)
- an udeb which does decompress other .tar.gz in the target directory
(i have a base.tar.gz that I decompress)
- a reboot udeb (simple shell script calling reboot and
unmounting/ejecting the CDROM)
- a basic hook mechanism for launching shell script whenever some events
happens (after-unpack-target, after-setup-bootloader), i'm using
run-parts to launch scripts put in
- a simple shell script to automatically setup grub (will add an entry for
Windows if /etc/windows_part exists).
I had to make some other hacks for my installer to work :
- make anna use my cdrom retriever by default
- remove devfs, it does totally confuse parted and grub-install
- changed some things in the build system of the images
(those changes are worth for d-i, so i commited them, at least the
beginning)
> This could be pretty easy to do, depending on if syslinux allows
> specification of things like foo/bar=baz on the command line, and if the
> command line can be sufficiently large. If it does that could seed values
> in a debconf database.
I think the buffer is not big enough to handle many parameters, and it's
not syslinux the problem but the kernel itself afaik. We'll need a
conversion mechanism to be able to use short names on the commande line.
> Instead of using Installer-Menu-Item fields, you can programmatically do
> this via the menutest script mechanism. See doc/ui.txt.
Oh, I didn't understand that. I thought that it was for deciding if an
item was selected by default ... that was my reading of doc/ui.txt.
Cheers,
--
Raphaël Hertzog -+- http://strasbourg.linuxfr.org/~raphael/
Le bouche à oreille du Net : http://www.beetell.com
Naviguer sans se fatiguer à chercher : http://www.deenoo.com
Formation Linux et logiciel libre : http://www.logidee.com
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