Re: VI reasons (was Re: Base Set: Suggested additions & removals.)
On Wed, 10 Jun 1998, Christopher C Chimelis wrote:
>
> On Wed, 10 Jun 1998, Dale Scheetz wrote:
>
> > If vi would fit on the rescue disk, do you think we would be discussing
> > ae?
>
> I guess not, then...
>
> > To be able to do an install with the rescue disk the space priorities
> > don't allow anything but ae in that environment. When you can get vi's
> > binary size down to the footprint of ae, I will be glad to replace it.
> > Until then all talk of superior usability are nothing but talk. It will
> > not fit.
>
> Maybe this should be worked on, then. I'll see what I can do with my
> limited resources and time, but I'm doubtful that it will fit no matter
> what we do :-(
>
> Hmmmm....any way we could compress it and uncompress it into a ramdisk?
> Just an idea...I know it's more trouble than just keeping ae, but I'm
> trying :)
>
I believe the right solution would be to design a separate, true, rescue
disk (what we now call the rescue disk is, in fact, the installation boot
disk) that has none of the installation software installed, but simply
boots into a single user shell with an appropriate set of tools, like vi,
fdisk, dd, ... so that the exprienced sys admin (or consultant) can come
in and recover broken systems. This is fundamentally a different job from
system installation. (in fact if the system installation is perfect you
need no additional tools at all ;-)
Someone in this conversation suggested that they had built rescue disks
with vi installed. What did they remove to make it fit?
As this is all a "root file system" issue (the root.bin file that goes on
the installation boot disk). I would suggest that asside from the default
installation kernel and root.bin we should have some alternative kernels
(with their proper drivers disk) that provide zImage instead of bzImage
kernel image files (some laptops still can't boot a bzImage) as well as
some alternative root.bin choices. A more powerful rescue disk, separate
from the installation disk would be a great place to start.
Waiting is,
Dwarf
--
_-_-_-_-_- Author of "The Debian Linux User's Guide" _-_-_-_-_-_-
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Flexible Software 11000 McCrackin Road
e-mail: dwarf@polaris.net Tallahassee, FL 32308
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