Re: 4-floppy base system
Bruce Perens:
> Enough people thought that removing dpkg-ftp from the base was a bad idea
> that I have reconsidered. The new base system will be 4 disks. This is
Thanks!
Here is a few suggestions for the floppies - not necessarily to do
right now, but maybe for 1.3... (or should that be called 2.0? :-)
Make the 4th floppy optional, for network installations only. But
then, if you can install from CD-ROM or hard disk, maybe you don't
need the base floppies at all? Just place a .tar.gz file (can't
use dpkg yet) with the minimal base system, on the CD or hard disk
partition. Then you just need the two boot/root floppies.
We might try to reduce the number of floppies even more for CD-ROM
installations - it should be possible to mount root from the CD
(use a small ramdisk for files that need to be writable), and some
newer BIOSes even support bootable CD-ROMs. Wow - zero floppies!
Also, I think much of the configuration (hostname, IP address, etc.)
should be done after the newly installed base system is booted from
hard disk for the first time. It's only then when you need the
network up and running for FTP or NFS installation. Besides saving
some space on the root floppy (the configuration script would be part
of the base system), someone might find it useful to be able to build
new machines with preinstalled Debian system which can simply be
plugged into a network at customer's site, asks for IP address etc.
I think there are some workstations (Sun or HP, I don't remember)
that are shipped this way, and also I heard that there are already
companies that sell machines with Linux preinstalled...
I noticed that the /etc/init.d/boot script in current sysvinit checks
for /sbin/unconfigured.sh and /sbin/setup.sh - they could be used for
this purpose. Someone already implemented these hooks, so I guess
I am not the first one who has this idea :-).
Now, since there is no need for networking on the boot floppy, it
can use a much smaller kernel (all it needs are disk and CD-ROM
drivers to be able to install the minimal base system, which has
the proper distribution kernel). Smaller kernel means that it
may be easier to install on a machine with only 4MB of RAM (has
anyone tried if it's still possible?), and maybe even just one
floppy with both the kernel and compressed root filesystem.
(if your BIOS doesn't support bootable CD-ROMs yet)
Comments?
Marek
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