On Sat, Jun 16, 2001 at 11:04:19AM -0400, Russell Hires wrote: > This is good to know. The thing I'm most afraid of is really doing some > damage with the whole booting procedure on the NewWorld machines. I'll > cross that bridge when I come to it. if you use ybin or the Make System Bootable command in woody's dbootstrap (which uses ybin) there is no risk of that. > It's the debian kernels? Is there something that debian does that munges > up the symbols? Or something else? Is it only for Woody, or is it the > boot floppies? i have no idea, i have never managed to compile a kernel myself that had these problems. i always build my own kernels and never use debian's any longer then necessary to get the system installed to where it can build a kernel. i don't care what the distribution is, distro kernels are too bloated (they have to be). > Yeah, I don't know what to do about this, because I attempted to install > potato a while back and set the networking information to the default > manual stuff (i.e., local address is 192.168.1.1, etc.) and then I > couldn't get PPPoE to work. Maybe I should just skip that step. <shrug> setting local address won't do you any good. you should demand better (read non-pppoe) service from your dsl provider. > Well, that presents me with the chicken and egg problem of: I've got the > .debs that PPPoE depends on, but I can't install them without dpkg, and > I don't know how to install that without dpkg... you can't install them onto the target system without screwing up the base install, and there is probably no room on the root disk. extracting it is no problem, but you must not do so anywhere but /tmp or /target/tmp, everything else in /target must be left pristine. i don't think that would work anyway since pppoe most certainly has depenencies not satisfied by the root disk. (the root disk libc is reduced and won't support anything not already present in the boot-floppies). > So the base doesn't depend on the file "Release", located at > http://http.us.debian.org:80/debian/dists/woody/ ? Or, it does, but I > can d/l that doc to my local drive, and use it from there? It sounds > like the install from this point requires that you be networked to get > the base files, or have them locally. So, is there a list of the real > .debs that I can d/l individually, or am I missing something again? > (sorry if I am) I just need enough to get my PPPoE working, so I can get > the rest of everything. there is no `base files' here is what happens for base install: debootstap (not the same as dbootstrap) is run with the mirror you chose, that mirror can be anywhere but MUST be a full debian mirror, as found on the CDs or at http.us.debian.org. debootstrap acts like apt-get, in a more limited way, it downloads the Release file and Packages file to it has access to the same information about the release and packages that apt-get normally needs. it then uses the Packages file to locate the pathname to the current version of each essential and base .deb, these are the SAME .debs that you would install with apt-get, in the very same place in the very same Packages file. debootstrap downloads all of the .debs in its essential and base list into /target/var/cache/apt/archives and once its downloaded them all (about 30 or so). it manually extracts the essential ones (libc, dpkg, perl and such using ar, tar, and gzip into the /target/ filesystem. after it is manually extracted just enough to get dpkg functional it chroots in, and runs dpkg to install all the packages it just unpacked (after creating enough of a dpkg status file to bootstrap it). after dpkg has installed those manually unpacked packages and is aware of them properly, debootstrap starts using it to extract the rest of the `base' packages, that is the ones in the `base' list. these are just a few packages that are not marked essential or required but are necessary for a debian system to be just functional enough to boot on its own and install the rest of the system. so the `install the base' is not just grabbing and unpacking a precooked root filesystem tarball, its creating a new root filesystem on the fly. but the difference from your perpective after base is installed is negligable from potato to woody. the base system is still very very small, consisting of no more then 30 or 40 packages. its the `how we got there from here' thats wildly different. > I don't mean to sound like I'm complaining. Easier maintenance is a Good > Thing. I'm thinking of a proposition like this: since PPPoE is GPLed, > perhaps it could part of the install (ick!), or an optional part at the > very least, for those of us stuck using it...or even just an extra piece > to be downloaded, with a tag like "If you're stuck using PPPoE..." it has been mentioned on debian-boot. it think there is probably just not enough room for it. we will see what happens though. -- Ethan Benson http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/
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