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Re: cross-dpkg problems



--On Sat, Nov 7, 1998 5:53 pm +0100 "Marcus Brinkmann"
<Marcus.Brinkmann@ruhr-uni-bochum.de> wrote:

>> 3) They have some non-Hurd-based system, and a free partition (or disk
>> space for a subdir install).  I'm very interested in supporting this
>> case, because the vast majority of people interested in the Hurd are
>> in this category.  The approach is as you state: install the ``base'',
>> then we have case #1 again.
>
> I can't see why it is so important to support this case. As you don'ßt
know
> what OS is installed, you have trouble supporting the user with this
option
> (is it Windows? Dos? which versions? Os/2? Linux? Some other OS?).
>
> Especially, if they already have a free partition, they can use the base
> disks, too:

Marcus - you have missed Gordon's point here.  Gordon sees it as a very
important goal (and I see his point) that someone can try hurd *without* a
free partition.

This requires, obviously, a special boot loader for each host OS along the
lines of loadlin, with the ability to use a regular file as the root device.

So, we simply distribute the base as an ext2fs image....

Gordon - the main point you missed was the need to have /var/lib/dpkg/* -
which is dpkg's database - in your base tarball.  The base.tar.gz that
debian uses has (I believe, I haven't checked) the appropriate files in it
to indicate which packages have been 'auto-installed' by the base tarball.

Jules

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