Re: No HFS driver, and "change install priority" menu option missing -- and other bugs found while testing 2.4 boot floppies on OldWorld PowerMac
On Fri, Sep 24, 2004 at 01:50:34AM -0400, Rick Thomas wrote:
>
> On Thursday, September 23, 2004, at 06:45 PM, Sven Luther wrote:
>
> >On Thu, Sep 23, 2004 at 06:30:48PM -0400, Rick Thomas wrote:
> >>
> >>On Thursday, September 23, 2004, at 06:13 PM, Sven Luther wrote:
> >>
> >>>>I understand the size constraints. But isn't that the reason why
> >>>>we added the "root-2" floppy? Would adding hfs and/or hfsplus kick
> >>>>us over the edge into "root-3" land?
> >>>
> >>>We could indeed add it to root-2, but i would prefer to get the
> >>>floppy loading
> >>>work correctly before i do this rather cosmetic thing working. And
> >>>hfs/hfsplus
> >>>without ide/scsi driver is not really all that useful, isn't it.
> >>
> >>
> >>OK. I think see the logic. I'm not clear on what comes from where
> >>as far as drivers and install components. Can you give me a
> >>general picture? (Seemingly, "net-drivers" and "cd-drivers" are
> >>obvious, but maybe not?) In particular, how are things that
> >>*aren't* on a particular floppy retrieved, and how does it know
> >>which of those to retrieve? Also, is there a general rule for what
> >>goes on "root", "root-2", one of the "drivers" floppy, or over the
> >>web?
> >
> >They are not, we need to find out a rule for those. Floppies are
> >mainly worked
> >and tested on x86, which have not the size problem we have.
> >
> >In root needs to be everything to load the rest of the floppies
> >(the floppy
> >driver and retriever) and the most of the other stuff. That is the only
> >constraint. We put in root-2 the rest of the non-driver stuff, in
> >the net
> >drivers the network drivers, and in the cd drivers the
> >ide/scsi/cdrom/disk/filesystem stuff, needed to make the cdrom work and
> >retrieve more stuff from there.
> >
> >For the rest of it, it is up to us to take decisions.
>
> Let me see if I've got this right -- please correct me if I've
> misunderstood:
>
> BOOT) The "boot" floppy has the kernel and miboot loader stuff
> (fake "System" that's really a boot-loader, and empty "Finder").
> That's all there is and it pretty much fills up the disk, even with
> a severely stripped-down (anorexic?) kernel. For what it's worth,
> there is about 169 K left.
Yes. On 2.6, it is the main kernel though. And remember for the rest that the
same list is used to build the 2.4 and 2.6 floppies, and since module size and
.udebs list differ, the space calculations are different for both, and in both
cases they have to fit on a floppy.
> ROOT) The "root" floppy has enough on it to talk to the console and
> keyboard (at least as far as being able to tell <cr>, the <space>
> key, the arrow-keys, and the <tab> key -- none of which depend on
> locale) set the locale, and finally, load the "root-2" floppy.
> That pretty much fills the floppy.
>
> There's about 160 K left on root of "compressed" space: equivalent
> to [maybe] 570 K of "uncompressed" space assuming a compression
> ratio similar to that of the current contents -- about 1:4. The
> largest single file is "libc". After that is /var/lib/dpkg/info,
> /bin/busybox, and /usr/lib/locale. Together these account for
> about 1/3 of the "uncompressed" space. The remaining 2/3 is lots
> of small potatoes -- nothing one can point to and say " That's big
> and useless. Let's get rid of it!".
I think the 2.6 version is almost full.
> ROOT-2) The "root-2" floppy is a bunch of "udeb"s for all the
> components that wouldn't fit on "root". [This is a good design,
> but it requires that "root" have everything needed to install a
> udeb, making the "root" floppy even more crowded.]
Well, the design was that both root and root-2 was on the same floppy. We just
moved to a second floppy stuff which was not absolutely needed in the first.
> The root-2 floppy seems to have about 600 K of free space. Since
> udeb's are already compressed, there's no issue of "compressed" vs
> "uncompressed" space on root-2.
Yep.
> Most of the stuff on root-2 seems to be for setting up the network
> (The largest single file is "nic-extra-modules-2.4.27-powerpc-small-
> di.udeb" -- 409 K, over half the total.) Some of that could,
Mmm, this one should not be there, but on the net floppies. I think i remember
that this last one was over crowded, and i moved this .udeb there because of
that.
> theoretically, be moved to the net-drivers floppy, but what would
> be the point? As long as root-2 is needed at all for overflow from
> root, and there's free space on it, why not use it? However, it's
> worth keeping this observation in mind if space on root-2 becomes
> tight and net-drivers remains uncrowded.
Which is not the case.
> The only stuff that really is absolutely required to be on root-2
> is that which is (1) not absolutely required to be on root, and (2)
> is needed for *both* a net-install *and* a CD-install. I'm not
> knowledgeable enough about the details of d-i architecture to tell
> which of the udebs on the present root-2 fits that criterion. Can
> you give me some clues?
Well, the stuff on root-2 is the one which was on root but had no more place
there. the net and cd drivers are supposed to contain only the stuff needed to
use cds or net.
> NET-DRIVERS) The "net-drivers" floppy, like root-2, is a collection
> of udeb's. This represents everything (modulo the stuff that goes
> on root-2 "because it's there") that is needed to get to the point
> of being able to download stuff from the web. This includes
> drivers for *all* sorts of network interfaces (PCI NIC cards,
> wireless PC-card NICs for laptops, serial-IP for people who must
> use modems, etc, etc...). It also includes things like
> dhcp-client, choose-mirror, software for getting things over the
> web, and so on. Most of this latter stuff seems to have landed on
> root-2 for (guessing) historical reasons.
Well, originally it was on root, and net drivers only contained the module
.udebs.
> Currently, the net-drivers floppy has about 447 K of free space.
But remember the size calculation is wrong for 2.6.
> CD-DRIVERS) The "cd-drivers" floppy is also a collection of
> udeb's. It represents everything that is needed to get to the
> point of being able to load stuff off of a CD-ROM. The largest
> single file is scsi-modules-2.4.27-powerpc-small-di.udeb, followed
> closely by scsi-common-modules-2.4.27-powerpc-small-di.udeb.
> Presumably, this reflects the fact that most CD-ROM drives are
> *logically* SCSI drives, even if their physical connections are IDE
> (ATAPI == SCSI commands over IDE wires). Most of the rest is also
> device drivers. One further thing needed on the cd-drivers floppy
> is the isofs file system driver, so we can locate and read the
> files on the CD.
>
> Currently, there is about 77 K of free space on the cd-drivers
> floppy, making it the tightest of all.
>
> FINALLY) We can assume that the CD-ROM (or the mirror-ed repository
> on the Web) is large enough that we can put just about anything on
> it that we might need -- after we get to the point where we can
> access it freely.
Yes, exact.
> Did I get that right?
Yes, mostly. just we have to be concerned by both the 2.4 and 2.6 floppies.
Friendly,
Sven Luther
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