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
and it could concievably be pre-generated, but that would preclude using
the installer on custom CDs.
Another option would be to add a different fingerprint scheme that is more
suited to doing specifically this - this is quite doable..
> 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.
> > - [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?
> 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.
Jason
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