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RE: Proposed directory structure for the installation "disks"



On Thu, 2 Mar 2000, Ross Boylan wrote:

> Thanks for this very useful information.  I was about to say it would be
> good if we could provide "one-stop shopping," so that people would only need
> to go to a single directory to get the files they needed (by picking media x
> flavor).  That would not work so well if we can't use links. (although the
> amount of extra disk space would not be that great).
> 
> So maybe the new recipe needs to be to descend the directory hierarchy,
> picking up all files in each directory as you go.

So you mean you want for example loadlin.exe in all /harddrive/[flavor]/
directories... On FTP, you would use symlinks, on CD hardlinks. Well, we can
easily convert those in the CD creation script with something like:

./sym2hard:
-----8<-----
#! /bin/sh

while [ "$1" != "" ]
do
  LsLine=`ls -l "$1"`
  PointsTo=`echo $LsLine | cut -d ' ' -f 11`

  rm -f "$1"
  ln `dirname "$1"`/"$PointsTo" "$1"

  shift
done
-----8<-----

And then
  find . -type l -exec ./sym2hard {} \;

This way, you can make all the symlinks you like on FTP, they will just show
up as hardlinks on the CDs.


Raphael: is it possible to include something like this (only for
/disks-i386/xxx/)?
(current/ should IMO _not_ be hardlinked to the versioned name)
And how is /install/ done on Potato CDs? Just hardlink to /disks-*/current/?


> I'd go with
> media-xxx/               #media, not images, since it may have non-images
>    [flavor]/
> hard-drive/	# media-big?  media-hard?

media-harddisk ("disk" is (AFAIK) better understandable in foreign languages
                than "drive".)

> 	loadlin.exe
> 	addons.tgz	# when ready
> 	base2_2.tgz
> 	root.bin  # if it can be made common
> 	[flavor]/
> dosutils/	# as above, less hard-drive specific ones (loadlin.exe?)
> doc/

If the sym/hardlink stuff gets used, I don't think it would be wise to have
loadlin both in /media-harddisk and all /media-harddisk/[flavor] directories. 
So should possibly be in "shared-tools/" or something, to make perfectly clear
that it's the same as the other instances ("dosutils/" is a little vague
IMHO).

Also, rawrite.exe should probably be in the floppy-media/[flavor]/ subdirs.

> Anyway, my confusion illustrates my point (!).  It needs to be crystal
> clear, hopefully even to people who don't RTFM, which files they need to
> get.  Karl's proposed top-level scheme mixes 2 principles: flavors and disk
> sizes.  Echoing Anne's point, (and her criticism of my earlier proposal), we

"his", to be exact (here in Holland it's a name for both sexes. Quite
confusing. No offence taken ;-)

> should keep one principle at work at each level of the directory.
> 
> In fact, we could take things one step further:
> basecont.txt
> md5sum.txt
> readme*
> doc/    # we could even eliminate this, putting all doc material at top

All docs at top-level is just a mess. One README (+ .html !!) which explains
(and links to) the contents of doc/ is much better.

> hard-drive/
>    # as above
> floppy-drive/  # 8.3 problems..... maybe use hard/ and floppy/

Hmmm. Also possible is media/harddisk/, media/1_44/, media/2_88/ etc. (So that 
we have only doc/ media/ and shared-tools/ at the top level.)

>    rawrite*
>    media-xxx/   # as above


It might also be interesting to consider putting the [flavor]'s at top level,
and then having [flavor]/harddisk/, [flavor]/1_44/ and so on. Of course this
scheme is only possible if/when the sym2hardlink stuff works.


Regards,
  Anne Bezemer


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