Re: ELF migration questions.
My thanks to Erick Branderhorst, Richard Kettlewell, Nikhil Nair,
Dirk Eddelb"uttel & Karl Ferguson for their constructive replies.
I hope this is a fairly complete digest of the replies I received.
I didn't want to reply to each one individually inorder to keep
the overall message count down. If someone feels I should take this
offline, please let me know and I'll reply directly to the original
sender. I hope there will be some more would-be ELF developers
that will benefit from this thread.
Erick Branderhorst said...
> dpkg-split --split provides splitting of .deb files. Not required unless
> using floppy;s to transport your .deb files.
This is something that I'm often faced with. I have a machine at
work (from which I'm composing this message), but I also have one
at home. The only reasonable way for me to collect files is from work.
The only reasonable media for me to transport files home is on floppy.
How would I make use of this feature, given a series of large (.ie gcc?)
.deb file?
> Get dpkg-1.0.16 in master.debian.orgdebian//private/project/Incoming
Okay, I'll retrieve it.
> For development stuff you need both (with and without "-dev") not all the
> ones but only those library or .h files you need to compile, this depends
> on the thing you want to compile.
Okay, I'll start with the basics (those required for rebuilding the kernel)
and then proceed as required. Would that be simply libc4, libc4-dev, libc5,
& libc5-dev ?
> Did you get your machine running, ? The default image is still not
> elf-compiled (perhpas now) but you need an elf-compiled kernel, otherwise
> you can't do anything.
It was the standard 0.93R6 kernel, though I have the elf module. Should
I have installed the image package?
Richard Kettlewell said...
> I installed *just* the development stuff, so I could rebuild packages
> for ELF and had no trouble...
When you say "*just* the development stuff", did you mean just the
packages with "-dev" in them and not the regular lib packages?
Nikhil Nair said...
> My understanding is that the *-dev packages are for actually doing
> development work, e.g. compiling. So libc5 would jsut contain the shared
> library /lib/libc5*, used at run-time; libc5-dev would contain the
> libraries in /usr/lib which are used at compile-time. That's my
> impression, anyway.
If this is true, I'll install both.
> Personally, I would have been very careful before replacing sysvinit.
> What kernel are you using? Does it have ELF built-in, or as a module,
> or neither?
I won't replace sysvinit then, unless someone convinces me that I should.
I believe the installation (from Bruce) was with ELF as a module.
Dirk Eddelb"uttel said...
> I guided someone who had asked on debian-user throught the process of
> upgrading to Elf by sending a couple of emails over a few days last week. He
> did me/us the favour of writing up some notes on which I commented back to
> him. It might be helpful to have some sort of approved document to throw at
> people because the question arises more and more often now.
This sounds like a good idea to me. I was fortunate I tried this
first on my spare machine at work, so I didn't have a whole bunch to
lose & it wasn't too painful to recover, but I wouldn't want someone
else to be discouraged by the experience. I realize this isn't meant
to be used by the general public, but my inability to move over to
an ELF generating system prevented me from putting together the X10
package. I don't have much time to contribute to the project, but
I'd really like to help in any way I can.
Karl Ferguson said...
> Perhaps it would be easier to create an 'easy-to-do' debian package that
> require you to have the other .deb's for ELF installation with it. That is,
> 6 or so debian packages in the same directory as the elf.deb package and
> that upgrading package upgrades everything for you perfectly. If one of
> the other debian pacakges it needs isn't there, it bails out and tells the
> user to get get the required package(s). And then the user can remove that
> pacakge if so desired knowing full-well that it's now an ELF system.
> Seems a much easier way to upgrade from 0.93R6 a.out to 1.1 elf for the
> "unknowing user"...
This sounds like a great idea too. It would take care of any questions
that might arise as a result of misinterpretations of the document.
Unfortunately, this would probably take a bit more work.
For now, I'll procede as follows, unless someone cautions me...
1) Install dpkg-1.0.16 in master.debian.orgdebian//private/project/Incoming
2) Install ld.so
3) Install libc4, replacing libc.
4) Install libc5
5) Install image
6) Install gcc, libg++, libc4-dev, libc5-dev.
Did I miss something? Do I need the aout-*, miscutils, binutils, or any other
packages in devel? Should I be able to reboot & run after this? ;-)
Thank you all for your comments.
Alex
--
Alex Arthur / Huntington, NY
aca@panix.com, artal03@cai.com
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