Re: Problems installing hurd on i386
Marcus,
Thanks for this. I should find time next week to follow all these
points up. However, the big thing is that is works even if I do not use
it properly myself.
On Mon, 4 Sep 2000, Marcus Brinkmann wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 03, 2000 at 02:34:23AM +0000, Philip Charles wrote:
> > Marcus,
> > I was doing all my work in the Debian installation shell and I
> > found that the tarball was mounted on /gnu/ not / so I modified it. The
> > modified tarball behaves in the same way as base2_2.gz so the modified
> > tarball now replaces base2_2 and is installed very nicely on / with the
> > "Install the Base System" option in the installation menu.
>
> We have a communication problem here. I am not sure what you mean with
> "mounting a tarball". What I do know is mounting the root partition, and
> extracting the tar file (eg, which path is stored in the tar file).
> Can you please clarify what you said?
The Debian install works using a ram-disk and everything I was doing used
this ram-disk. In the first stages of developing this system I copied the
tarball onto /target (the mounted HURD partition on the HDD) then untared
it there. Later I used the "Install Base the Base System" in the
installation menu to the same work, it was at this stage I found I had to
modify it.
>
> > 1. "mount" in the tarball does not seem to like iso9660 file systems and
> > so the CD-ROM cannot be read.
>
> The Hurd doesn't have a mount syscall, and so mount is just a wrapper of the
> more general settrans utility, which installs translators. Check
> www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-doc-translator for an introduction into
> translators. You should definitely read and understand it for the things you
> do.
>
Will do. It will need to go into the documentation as well.
> > 2. "dselect" is the old slink version and has problems with the potato
> > non-US file layout.
>
> Use ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/hurd/debian/* dpkg packages, please.
I will take a look at these later. They may need to be reorganized for a
Debian installation CD.
> > The work-around for the iso9660 problem
>
> settrans /cdrom /hurd/isofs /dev/hd1
>
Thanks, and this will need to be included in the documentation.
> > was to copy the packages onto the
> > HURD partition while in the installation shell. The problem here was
> > that cp in the shell copied what the symlinks points to .... and there
> > is a circular symlink .....
>
> You should know about the -a option to cp. (cp -a foo/ /bar).
> Which cp in which shell do you mean?
The ram-disk. But if this will be of no importance if the CD is mounted.
It was a temporary work-around.
>
> BTW, there must not be symlinks in the path to the packages you give to
> dselect if you want the CD to work. The isofs translator in the Hurd is
> broken and will not parse symlinks correctly.
>
This will need to be taken into account when the file-system on the CD is
prepared. Thanks for the warning.
> > When I used dselect (without non-US) it did some work then fell over
> > because of unmet dependencies. However "joe" (my favorite editor)
> > installed nicely with dpkg.
>
> joe is broken on the Hurd. Don't use it. You will get file corruption in
> saved files. Use vi or emacs (or fix joe). jed is also ok.
>
> All dependency issues are solved when using the packages at
> alpha.gnu.org/gnu/hurd/debian and creating a newer tar file.
>
Thanks for this.
> > I did all this on a machine with only one partition, HURD (didn't bother
> > with swap even) and no network connection.
>
> You must use swap, or the Hurd will easily crash. With 48 MB RAM, the Hurd
> crashes soon after the dselect run to install all standard packages. SO, for
> most people, swap is absolutely mandatory and for everyoine it's a good
> idea. Every install documents should mention that adding swap increases
> stability significantly, even if you think you have enough memory (that's an
> effect hard to describe, but believe me that 32 RAM/+32 swap is more stable
> then 64 RAM without swap).
Me being lazy. I was doing several installs a day so I did not bother.
That system has since been replaced yet again. This should be in the
documentation.
> > What I would like to do in a week or two's time is to start to butcher
> > boot-floppies. There is a very useful development path here
> >
> > 1. The HURD partition could be formatted with a menu item (no more
> > typos!!)
>
> Menu items? You mean in boot floppies?
Yes.
>
> > 2. Redundant menu items could be removed.
>
> There are some things the Hurd doesn't support. Those have to be removed
> also.
Quite agree. No great difficulty here, only time needed.
> Note that debian-boot is currently completely reworking boot-floppies for
> woody. Could you consider working on that, taking care that it will work on
> the Hurd?
I have been downloading boot-floppies from cvs for some time now. However
I would prefer to wait until it become stable. There should be no
difficulties in making a switch.
> > 3. Put a more useful version of cp in the ram-disk.
>
> I think it's better to solve the real problem.
>
Here here.
> > 4. Modify documentation.
> > 5. A series of base floppies could be generated so that HURD could be
> > installed by floppies only (does anyone do this any more?).
>
> I had some work done in this direction. We need one boot disk and two root
> disks, and there are a couple of hurdities you don't know about. I will take
> a look at it again, but there is a show stopper right now:
>
This will a separate project, but not difficult.
> 0. port fdisk to the Hurd, which should get the disk geometry from a yet to
> be written interface in libstore.
>
> Without fdisk, ...
>
This would not be necessary for the actual installation, but it would be
very nice.
> > The beauty of the Debian packaging and installation systems is that they
> > are quite generic, even M$ could use them. I see my role as adapting the
> > installation system to install HURD rather than hacking HURD itself.
>
> It's great that somebody picks this up. This was one of my goals, too, but I
> pushed this further away because there are a couple of stones on the road I
> am not interested in pushing away. I am happy to help with the root and boot
> disks, as I already did them some time before (for example, I wrote the
> mklibs.sh script used in the current boot-floppies to create the minimal
> shared libs, and I originally wrote it for the Hurd).
So I am already using them. The Debian rescue and root floppies set up
the ram-disk, it is base2_2 that is the Linux installation. In our case
base2_2 happens to be HURD.
The way I see it is that if you keep developing the tarball and make
certain that it does what you want it to, I will make certain that it gets
unpacked onto a HURD partition. After all it is the tarball that is the
initial HURD installation. The rest is the means to this end.
Another issue is that of documentation to include on the CD. It would be
great if someone other than me prepare and collate it.
Phil.
-
Philip Charles; 39a Paterson St., Abbotsford, New Zealand; +64 3 4882818
Mobile 025 267 9420. I sell GNU/Linux CDs. See http://www.copyleft.co.nz
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