Re: debian, just what i always wanted.
On Mon, 6 Nov 1995, Bruce Perens wrote:
> cas@muffin.pronet.com said:
> > I suspect that the developers haven't done a full install from
> > floppy onto a bare disk for ages.
>
> I must have run 20 this weekend while testing the new feature of
> installing the base system from CD-ROM instead of floppies.
>
> The problem is that the installer is really the prototype - the "real"
> one never got written. I'm working on it, and have some enhancements
> contributed by Winfried that will appear in future systems.
Yeah, i thought that must have been the case. It looked like someone
wrote it, got it working, and then more interesting and/or urgent stuff
needed to be done :-)
> > why use LDLINUX.SYS on the install boot disk instead of LILO?
>
> The result can be manipulated on a DOS system - for example you can
> edit in odd boot parameters or change the kernel because it's an
> MS-DOS filesystem and the parameter list and kernel are in normal DOS
> files.
> > - why doesn't the install program ask you how you want to format
> > the install drive? I know you can shell out and fdisk/format it
> > yourself manually (that's what I did).
>
> The "Custom" installation asks. The "Novice" installation was done
> that way at the request of FSF "to make it easier for the naive
> user". This definitely needs to be fixed.
I used the custom installation. It asked me what partitions to create,
and allowed me to format them.
It didn't allow me to tune any of the e2fs parameters. For example, it
didn't allow me to change the 5% reserved for root to the 1% which I
prefer (on a big disk, 5% is a huge amount of space...1% is enough).
Also, I would have liked the option to do a quick format rather than a
full badblock check...I *knew* that the disk was fine, and wanted to get
the install done quickly.
> > - why isn't there any Quick Install document, which gives in point
> > form the steps required to create boot, root, and base disks under
> > either dos or unix?
>
> All we have is the prototype manual from February 1995 on the Web site.
> Ian Murdock says he'll eventually finish this manual :-( .
>
> > yes, I DO volunteer to write one if it doesn't already exist.
>
> Go for it.
OK. Point me at what Ian's already done, and I'll see if I can finish it
off, if he doesn't mind.
> > why the need to copy all the *.deb files from the .../debian-0.93/
> > binary/ hierarchy into one big directory? Why can't dselect
> > automatically search in all subdirectories of .../binary/ for *.deb
> > packages?
>
> This should not be necessary. I'd have to discuss how you installed
> the system to figure out why you needed to do this.
OK. Here's what I did:
I mirrored ftp.debian.org:/debian to a machine called orac in
/usr3/debian.
I NFS mounted orac:/usr3 to /orac.
Then I told dselect to use /orac/debian/debian-0.93/binary as the source
directory.
It said something like "no binary packages found".
I tried symlinking /orac/debian/debian-0.93/binary/*/*.deb and
/orac/debian/debian-0.93/binary/Packages* to /orac/binary. dselect
still didn't want to play.
Then I copied them (or hard-linked...can't remember exactly - makes no
difference anyway) to /orac/binary.
This worked. dselect had no problems finding the binaries.
I expect that I should have RTFMed a bit more and maybe I wouldn't have
had to do this.
Craig
--
cas@muffin.pronet.com cas@muffin.apana.org.au
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