Re: tar file, boot floppies
On Thu, Feb 01, 2001 at 06:53:01AM +0000, Philip Charles wrote:
> My objective was to get a functioning HURD installation CD(s) out the door
> and available as quickly as possible.
If you can do that without investing too much time, this is helpful
as an interim solution.
Otherwise I would suggest to concentrate on the new installer.
> Boot Floppies. (I am talking about the Debian package)
>
> Creating base*.tgz (the tarball) is easily separated out from boot
> floppies and I am treating this separately. At the moment I am doing some
> work on this part, and at this stage it seems that it needs to be created
> on a HURD system.
Please be more specific about why it seems so. I can only assume that the
script producing the base.tgz runs some script (probably in a chroot) that
expect to be able to execute programs from the base files themselve. In this
case, yes, this needs to run natively.
One of the things that would be helpful here, btw, is to modify
tar to be able to read and write translator settings, so we can put the
"device files" in the base file and have tar installing them at extraction
time. This is as complex as adding symlink support to tar (which is already
done), but you don't read/write symlinks but passive translators.
> Boot/root disks are easy to create for HURD. They use Linux at the moment
> and I see no real reason to change to using the HURD.
There are a couple of reasons, at least: Install and use translators in
the install program. Proof that the Hurd really is self contained. As the
root disk is also the rescue disk, having a real Hurd system is not
unimportant (in the long run).
I have worked on boot and root disks in the past, and I am prepared to do
so again (though not in the next few weeks). It's a bit difficult to fit
all of Hurd on two disks, but it is doable with some tricks. We even have
some scripts to automate that, which just require a few updates and some
testing.
I definitely want Hurd boot/root disks, but using Linux disks for now is ok
(the new installer should have hurd disks though).
> The Linux boot-floppies require a number of sophisticated packages, some of
> which I suspect are not available with the HURD at present, but I have not
> checked.
I think you are talking about the potato/woody installer, not the new one,
right? It's okay to butcher that to your liking, as with the new installer
we will have a better chance to do it right.
> debian-cd (Again I am talking about the Debian package)
>
> The butchered scripts are messy at the moment, and will continue to be so
> for some time I suspect. The HURD is very much under development and so
> the scripts are full of work-a-rounds and these change every few weeks.
> For example, two completely different packages are used to create CD1 and
> CD2, these could be combined, but they would have to be modified for the F
> series so it easier to keep them separate at the moment. There are vital
> tools that are missing from the HURD, eg mkisofs, which prevent debian-cd
> being ported.
Yes. There are two issues. Debian stuff needs to seperate between hurd and
linux all/any packages (the old issue), and the Hurd in general needs to be
more complete and uptodate.
Thanks,
Marcus
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