Re: Usage of isolinux on the beta CDs
Santiago Garcia Mantinan <manty@debian.org> writes:
> Umm, seems like we go again for the same discusion, ok, I've been gathering
> some old links to try to shorten this.
>
> The isolinux / multiboot / boot floppy emulation (syslinux) decision was
> already discussed for woody, at that time I was building unofficial images
> for all woody's arches, and I also partitipated on this discusion, I dislike
> isolinux because of the problems they give in old machines, but I also see
> its good side letting us have bigger and different initrds and kernels.
But we don't have that for the netinstall and businesscard CDs.
> > > it seems that we are locking out people from testing by using isolinux
> > > on our netinst/businesscard CDs, see #220139 and #220139.
> > >
> > > Since we do not need any of isolinux's features I propose to use
> > > syslinux on the CDs.
>
> We are using these features, current isolinux setup allows the user to
> select to boot the "net" initrd or the "cdrom" initrd. I don't know if this
> is wanted, this must be decided by the debian-installer guys, if we want to
> offer just the posibility to boot the cdrom image we can just boot
> cdrom.img, I have just tried it and it works, even though the setup for
> syslinux should be changed a bit to include the help screens and all that,
> this should be done in debian-installer, as it is d-i who makes that image.
I've been working on the new build scripts for d-i to build more
functional images directly. They generate 3 different CD images each
suited specifically to one task and one task only:
5MB bootcd - just boots but is like netboot or floppy boot in all
other respects
20MB d-i cd - image with tons of udebs to get your network up and
running and disk partitions so you can install base over net.
60MB base cd - image with udebs and all the debs needed to install
base. Everything needed till the first reboot (and a little more
e.g. for dsl). You have a fully functional Debian without any net
access but nothing in the way of apps.
Given those three types its a bit pointless to have multiple initrds
on the cdrom. People who want less than is on the cdrom should have
downloaded the smaller cd in the first place. I know the beta1 scripts
don't build a pure bootcd image but thats coming now that beta1 is out.
In cases were you end up with an old cd and would like to not use
the outdated (u)debs on the cdrom I say tough luck. People should live
with the old udebs or rsync a fresh image. Its only 5 or 20MB. Not
supporting a lot of older hardware just to be able to choose a
different behaviour not intended by the cd is not worth it.
> > Maybe we could put isolinux on the *second* CD, with eventually an
> > initrd that supports SCSI cdroms.
>
> That sounds fine with me if it is ok to drop the net initrd from the booting
> options of the cds.
What second cd? Only the full set has multiple cds.
For a cd with isolinux we should probably build a huge initrd with all
the ide/scsi/cd modules preinstalled. We are not bound by the 2.88MB
limit there, right?
> Well, I don't know what else to say, in the full cd set we really can have
> different booting methods, one on each cd, the important thing is to decide
> what do we put on the netinst/bussinesscard cds and also how do we order the
> methods in the full cd set.
>
> If something I said needs farther explanation (I know my english sucks) just
> ask for it.
As a conclusion: My opinion is that the boot/netinst/bussinesscard
images are small enough to force people to download the right one in
favour of supporting all cdrom bootable i386 hardware. That means a
2.88MB floppy image with syslinux.
For the full set smae as with previous releases: cd 1 multiboot and cd
2 - X different single boot flavours.
MfG
Goswin
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