Re: Hi, and embedded routers

[David Weinehall <tao@debian.org>]

On Sun, Jul 25, 2004 at 10:37:53PM -0400, Carl Worth wrote:
> On Thu, 22 Jul 2004 15:47:28 +0200, "David N. Welton" wrote:
> > Depends what you are doing I guess, but on the system I'm working with, 
> > I don't care about keeping track of packages.  I just want to create the 
> >   target system and be done with it
> 
> A package system can make this process easier, even if you don't need to
> do any dynamic package management on the running system. And eliminating
> all the storage overhead from a dpkg or ipkg database if you don't want
> it is as simple as blowing away a single directory.

I've been pondering about a "apt-remote" tool for a while, that would
perform the update semi-remotely; you keep /var/lib/dpkg/{status,info}
on the target, but the rest of the infrastructure only exists on the
source computer, which does the upgrade calculations, downloads the
packages, builds the package tree etc, then installs the package
contents on the the target, the target runs the install scripts and gets
the status file updated (possibly remotely) after the install is
finished.

This way, only things actually used run-time (including pre/post/config
files, that might be used for reconfiguring packages, and of course need
to exist if a package is ever installed manually) need to exist on the
target system, apt (~3MB), /var/cache/apt/* (usually 3-5MB
depending on arch), /var/lib/apt/* (usually 5-15MB depending on arch)
can all be removed.

Any opinions?  (For all I know, a similar solution might already exist,
in that case I'd be happy to be informed...)

Just my 0.02 Euro.


Regards: David Weinehall
-- 
 /) David Weinehall <tao@acc.umu.se> /) Northern lights wander      (\
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