On Dec 7, 2005, at 12:27 PM, Hans Ekbrand wrote:
So, yeah, I'd say it doesn't provide a clear description.Here a draft on the possiblities involved. If my understanding of the issues are correct, the installation manual needs some extensive rewriting. There are three different stages A, B and C, that can be loaded by different means: A. How to *start* the debian-installer? 1. Boot from removable media that has an installer-image on its boot block (e.g. CDROM, floppy, usb) 2. Use a bootloader from within a existing operating system (yaboot, BootX, penguin) 2b. (possible, but not very common) Use a native bootloader (yaboot, grub, lilo) installed on harddisk) 3. Netboot (pxe or other methods gets a bootloader by dhcp and tftp) (pxelinux or yaboot loads (by tftp) the kernel and initrd needed)B. From where is the debian-installer to get its *own modules* (needed for its own functioning)?1. From the removable media (CDROM or usb) that started the debian- installer at boot 2. From .iso-file on local harddisk (Filesystem must be readable by the debian-installer, which exludes HFS+)3. From the net (internet or local debian-mirror)
Oh, I get that all right. Where you lose me is the rationale for the bootstrap/installer being incomplete in the first place. What's preventing the a complete set of debian-installer modules from residing on the ram-disk--as it did with the woody installer?
I'd like to know the rationale for why HFS+ is not supported by the installer--especially as the kernel is specifically compiled for systems that are likely to have only HFS+ filesystems. What's so difficult about building powerpc installer kernels with CONFIG_HFSPLUS_FS ?
Supposing that there is a compelling reason for an incomplete installer: In such cases the installer should _always_ provide a route to B.3. Instead the etch hd-media installer insists on _ONLY_ B.2 while not bothering to support the only FS likely to be available.
In short there are three perfectly reasonable ways to resolve the situation: 1. A complete ram-disk -- everything loaded by the bootstrap from whatever source is selected in A. 2. Kernel supports whatever filesystem is likely to be present on the bootstrap source (including HFS+) 3. Installer is _always_ provides a path for fetching module from the network.