Re: boot-floppies

["M.C. Vernon" <mcv21@cus.cam.ac.uk>]

> Has anyone thought much about how Hurd's equivalent of boot-floppies
> will work? Presumably one could copy the Debian GNU/Linux package quite
> closely, using the libraries slang and newt to provide windows and
> menus on a VSA screen in text mode. However, when I was trying to
> localise that package I ran into some difficulties, mainly the problem
> of using a different character set. So, if, by any chance, someone has
> already thought about a different way of doing it, I would be
> interested to hear about it.

This is a pet project of mine. Unfortunatly, I see little point in doing
this whilst passwords are not supported. I was told on hurd-help that USA
encryption laws prevent them from including the algorhythm that does
password checks :(. I think recompiling hurd may solve this, but I've
never done that before.

As to boot floppies, I think that to start with a very simple interface
would do (possibly using libreadline, but nothing more), given that most
of the hurd install is simple once you know what you're doing :-)

Matthew

-- 
Elen sila lumenn' omentielvo

Steward of the Cambridge Tolkien Society
Selwyn College Computer Support
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Chamber/8841/
http://www.cam.ac.uk/CambUniv/Societies/tolkien/
http://pick.sel.cam.ac.uk/