Re: [NEWS] status of boot-flopppies
>
> On Fri, 19 Nov 1999, Massimo Dal Zotto wrote:
>
> > The apt sources.list configuration can be made optional if the installation
> > is done from the official cdroms or a copy of them. If we put a pre-cooked
> > sorces.list describing the official cdrom set it is easy to adapt it to the
> > actual location of the installation source (cdrom, http, nfs, etc.), assuming
>
> APT requires a 'fingerprint' of the CD to be able to identify which disc
> is which. The fingerprint is similar in concept to ls -l /cdrom/ | md5sum
You forget the total cdrom size, which unfortunately changes when you add the
fingerprint and the apt files to the new iso image. But there are workarounds
for this.
> and it could concievably be pre-generated, but that would preclude using
> the installer on custom CDs.
Why? If the above fingerprint program is provided as an utility to custom-cd
makers it could be used by anyone wanting to burn its own cd's. I have already
made my custom cd's with a self-referential fingerprint and the pre-cooked
sources.list as described above, and they work just fine.
And anyway the installer could still searching the files with the old method
if the description file is missing. Or we could just decide that it must be
present on all future debian cd's, which isn't a bad idea.
It would be also nice to have a standard script to generate custom cd's from
a cd-root directory containing all the .deb and the Packages files.
I suggest also that the boot cd contains the Packages.cd of all the cd's so
that one is not forced to swap the cd's. If one wants to make his own cd he
has to make a new Packages.cd anyway, so why have don't have the sane full
list in all the official cd's?
> Another option would be to add a different fingerprint scheme that is more
> suited to doing specifically this - this is quite doable..
This could be another option, but I believe that also the current scheme can
be used for this purpose. The only difficult thing is to make self-referential
fingerprints, which requires a bit of black-magic. But if you have a simpler
scheme it is welcome.
> > The search for the base system could be completely skipped if the debian-cd
> > people could store in a well-known location on the cd a small file containing
> > the paths of all the important files. If only relative paths are used they
>
> Whoever is going to fix this, please contact me and I will describe the
> apt-cdrom fast search algorithm for locating files, a slightly modified
> version of that would probably be able to locate the base1_2.tgz file very
> fast even over NFS.
>
> Obviosly you'd do this only after checking a couple standard locations.
Or just reading a ten-lines cdrom description file, which should be easy to
generate automatically and simple to read from the bootdisk. This would make
things simpler to people wanting to immplement non standard install disk,
like my automatic installer. If we have a standard way to know what there is
in a cd an to describe the contents of a custom-cd we can easily interchange
official and custom cd's and installers.
> > > - [11/18/1998, ezanard] Extract the config steps (kbdconfig, tzconfig,
> > > netconfig, pcmcia-config, ...) into stand-alone tools. Move them to
> > > the proper packages (kbdconfig -> kbd, tzconfig -> timezones, ...)
> > > or create new packages for them, so that they are available anytime,
> > > not only at installation time.
> >
> > Also make them completely scriptable so that they can be run without user
> > interaction if need
>
> Why? Shouldn't they be using debconf now?
Is it usable also from the bootdisk? And what if one wants to force a
particular configuration without using debconf. IMHO having also a batch
option is always a good thing.
> > IMHO sed, awk and a real editor should be on every rootdisk. If we use a
> > 1.44MB compressed rootdisk there should be plenty of space to store them.
> > I can't consider `rescue' a disk which doesn't include these very basic
> > utilities.
>
> IMHO it is insane to have install disk == rescue disk - we throw away too
> much valuable space for tools like 'awk' 'sed' etc etc. A seperate rescue
> floppy with a more complete toolset is a much smart idea. SuSE does this
> well, the install floppy lets you load modules and things and then it
> somehow 'chain boots' to the sperate rescue floppy which has a
> surprisingly complete system! It had ifconfig, route ftp ping, bash (!!)
> etc.
Well, the debian rescue floppy is currently used for both purposes.
Anyway my experience is that having awk and sed for install scripts makes
life much more easier, particularly if the install program is completely
written as a shell script, like my automatic installer.
--
Massimo Dal Zotto
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