On Jan 13, 2009, at 2:58 AM, Martin Michlmayr wrote:
* Martin Michlmayr <tbm@cyrius.com> [2009-01-13 08:23]:3) Is there any way to have d-i offer slug users the same kind of network configuration options as are considered normal for users of other systems? For example, it appears that there is room for some user-definable data at the end of the flash image (see the "--payload" option in the upslug2 man page). Can that be used to preseed some d-i parameters, such as networking configuration?Good question; I don't know. Maybe you can investigate. But this would require users to regenerate the image...Sorry, I was wrong here. Yeah, this sounds like an interesting approach.
I don't think regenerating the image should be necessary. If "-- payload" can be used along with the image you provide, then there could be code in the image that looks to see if the "payload" area has something that looks like a preseed (maybe a "magic number" or checksum or timestamp or something else to be reasonably sure we're not being fooled by random data or by stuff left-over from the last d- i.) If there is, it can use it, if not, it can ignore it.
And the preseed can be quite general, not just for network configuration, though I assume that network configuration would be one very common use.
If '--prefix' can't be used, then maybe just concatenating the (suitably encapsulated) preseed on the end of the image?
Or am I missing something? I don't know much about the internals of the upslug2 process, so I'm sure there's plenty I could be missing. Is there documentation beyond the upslug2 man page I could look at? In particular, I gather that the program on the slug end of the upslug2 process is called "redboot" -- is that correct? Is there a Linksys manual or technical paper describing redboot?
Thanks! Rick