Re: Question about custom boot partitions

[Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr>]

On Mon, Apr 12, 2004 at 05:02:45PM +0100, Martin Michlmayr wrote:
> There are at least 2 sub-architectures which need a special ext2
> partition to boot.  That is, not just an ext2 file system, but an ext2
> file system of revision 0 with no extensions (mkfs.ext2 -r 0 -O none).
> Now I wonder how to implement this in partman.  As I see it, there are
> 3 options:
> 
>   1. Change the ext2 type to always be revision 0, and then write some
>      finish.d scripts which check that boot (or root if there's no
>      separate boot) is of ext2.
>   2. In addition to having a ext2 type, also have a "traditional ext2"
>      type or so, and create finish.d scripts.
>   3. Followg partman-palo or -newworld and create, say, a "Cobalt boot
>      partition" (for Cobalt machines).  The problem is that 2
>      different sub-arches need ext2 -r 0 as boot (MIPS Cobalt, and ARM
>      Netwinder), so we'd have 2 virtually identical packages.  (There
>      would be some differences, though.  Cobalt requires the boot
>      partition to be the _first_ partition while Netwinder doesn't care.)

I would go for 3., and have one package, which would then detect on
which subarch you are running (MIPS Cobalt or ARM Netwinder, mmm, maybe
even different arches would be enough, but we need to check for
subarches anyway) and then add the appropriate main menu entry, and the
appropriate magic for that. Ideally, this package would then also
provide an appropriate partman receip or something for it.

Friendly,

Sven Luther