I hope to get the netinst CDs to a size that can be used with d-i on a
128 MB USB memory stick again. It's currently too big now. There's a lot
of cruft on there --
- The following packages are present on the netinst CD, but are not
installed as part of the base system, and so are not really needed
on it. Most notable is all the MTAs; exim4 is the default MTA and
only it is needed. Simularly, we only need one awk, not three, only
one inetd, not two, only one init system, not two.
exim
libldap2
libdb4.1 (perl uses 4.0 which is also present)
gawk
original-awk
masqmail
courier-base
courier-authdaemon
courier-mta
exim4-daemon-heavy
inetutils-inetd
debconf-english
file-rc
esmtp
nullmailer
postfix
sendmail
ssmtp
m4
- Many many udebs are present on the netinst CD, but will not be
used by d-i, or are part of the d-i initrd, and so only take up
space on the CD. I have attached two commented lists of these udebs.
- The highly confusing diagrams in README.{txt,html} about setting up
apt are all unnecessary; the installer sets up apt for the user.
- The README.mirrors.{txt,html} is not particularly useful, since the
debian installer will walk the user through setting up apt to use a
mirror.
- The README.non-US, becauses being very outdated (says we cannot
export ssh for example), is useless as this CD contains no non-US
items, and I doubt any for sarge will, as non-us is essentially now
for oprhaned software and a very few packages with patent problems.
- The doc/install directory is pretty much useless, since it
documents the boot floppys and not d-i. d-i has not finished its
documentation, but I suppose you could replace all this stuff with
our INSTALLATION-HOWTO document for now.
- Much of the other stuff in the doc/ directory is only of use to
developers and sociologist (constitution.txt), is better documented
on the web (bug-*, mailing-lists.txt), does not apply to
this release of debian (dedication-2.2*), does not apply to this CD
(source-unpack.txt; no source here), would better be shipped as a
debian package (debian-keyring.tar.gz).
- With isolinux, the /install/cdrom.gz is used, which means that
/install/cdrom-image.img is useless, and it wastes 2.9 mb.
- /install/floppy-initrd.gz is 100% useless
- /tools/README.tools documents directories that do not exist. The
/tools/REAMDE seems sufficient without README.tools.
- /tools/src seems useless, why include source on a minimal netinst CD?
- Contents-i386.gz is huge, and confusingly documents files that are in
packages not on the CD. I say remove it.
- The dists/sarge/contrib directory exists, but has only empty Packages
files etc in it. The installer does not use or enable contrib, this
should be removed from the netinst cds, which should never need to
have non-free or contrib packages on thhem.
- dists/sarge/main/source exists, but is empty. If there is not source
on a CD, the directory should not be present.
- I don't get the point of having both Packages and Packages.gz on the
same CD. We somehow save space by including a duplicate compressed
copy? All tools should be able to deal with uncompressed Packages
files, or, better, compressed ones.
Other problems:
- The d-i syslinux help screens are not used. You'll find these inside
our cdrom-image.img file as distributed by the d-i project. The
current help screens do not properly document debian-installer's
command line parameters, copyright, etc, etc.
- The boot.bat passes obsolete parameters, like init=/linuxrc, which
will not work with d-i anymore.
- There might be a reason for including cd_drivers-image.img,
so floppy images can be made and used to boot a system that cannot
boot CD, but then it should also include the scsi_drivers floppy
image for similar reasons, and does not.
- dists/{frozen,stable,unstable} all incorrectly point to sarge;
we currently have ugly hacks in d-i to avoid this confusing d-i,
and would like to remove them, and these extra symlinks, please.
- On i386, pcmcia-kernel-modules-{all kernels on CD}.deb should be
included. Otherwise users will not be able to use pcmcia.
--
see shy jo
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