Re: ELF floppy set progress report
> Once you have a connection to a service provider (or wherever) set up you
> can use slattach to change the line discipline to SLIP. This is a tiny
> program (15k) and is part of netbase.
Yes, I can probably use that and "chat" to provide a basic SLIP connection.
Providing the laplink-like functionality would be nice, too.
> What options have you put in to support installation from CD-ROM? I know
> that your 0.93 CD-ROMs had the option to install the base system from
> CD-ROM; it'd be nice if this was retained.
That is still in there.
> It'd also be nice to allow one- or no-floppy installations, by having the
> root disk contents available on the CD-ROM.
A one-floppy CD install is possible. It might need a bit of
find-the-filesystem code in the kernel that would check all of the
possible CD devices and try to figure out which one has the root on it.
> A third option would be to make a bootable CD, but there are very few
> BIOSes (if any) in the field that implement this. A thought for the
> future, anyway.
No-floppy boot from real-mode DOS is possible using LOADLIN. Syslinux
could be put on an ISO filesystem with a bit of hacking, and it would
work for some SCSI CDs on Adaptec controllers. This gets esoteric, though.
> When watching people install Debian from your CD, I've noticed that they
> get slightly worried about having to tell it to install from CD twice;
> once for the base system, and then again for the dselect installation
> method. If the base is installed from CD, could this be saved in
> /var/lib/dpkg/{cmethopt,methods/disk/shvar.cdrom} so that the user isn't
> asked again?
I don't think this will be a problem, as I don't use the half-installed
state for the base packages under 1.1 . The entire packages are installed.
Dselect should see that they don't need to be updated.
Bruce
--
Bruce Perens <Bruce@Pixar.com> A campaigner for Clinton and against Censorship.
Toy Story: $183M and counting. At $184M it will beat the #1 movie of 1995.
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