Re: Floppy X

[Stephen Early <sde1000@chiark.chu.cam.ac.uk>]

On Wed, 17 Apr 1996, J wrote:

> I know that X can not be put in the 3 base disks but think
> it would be possible to put VGA server, core binary (I mean
> the absolute minimum) in
> a few disks(I do not know the sizes so I just guess) so that
> users can log in to X as root. If dselect is made in X later
> I am sure this will be a base. 

To log into X you must have (at least):

xdm            87716
xauth          35876
xterm         230000
twm           137384
xrdb           28600
libX11.so.6.0 591290
libXt.so.6.0  309161
libXmu.so.6.0  83851
libXaw.so.6.0 260903
libSM.so.6.0   34609
libICE.so.6.0  82531
libXext.so.6.0 37024
XF86_VGA16   1424320
base fonts   3692544

Total:       7035809

> I suggest additional base disks for X. Therefore there is an
> option in the installation whether people want to have minum
> X. If they want they can put X base disks in the base disk
> unpacking.

This is quite a lot of extra disks.

I expect that what will happen once we have an X-based dselect is that 
the base disks will be installed as they are at the moment. The first 
thing that will happen once the new system is booted will be that the 
user is asked whether they want to use a graphical package selector. If 
they do, the base X packages will be installed and the graphical package 
selector will be started. If they don't, dselect will be used just as it 
is now.

> Whenever I copy all these
> X lib, binary and servers, somehow floppy corruption occurs
> especially with floppies non Sony (sony is the only high quality
> floppy I have, others are cheap OEMs). Also, I do not know
> what are the very necessary components for minimal running so
> I tend to copy a lot.

Bear in mind that some of the packages are too large to fit on a single 
floppy. You should be splitting them using dpkg-split. I know this isn't 
terribly convenient. There has been some discussion about providing 
ready-split packages on the ftp site, but nothing has happened so far.

> When I tried to install, dselect tells me dependency problems.
> I think it is because I have too many floppies which are
> mixed with different releases(some unstable some older). As you
> know people do not organize floppies (that is why people
> want to computer to organize things).

When you are given a message about dependency problems, it will tell you 
exactly what it is looking for.

> Different level of base disks will be ideal. 
> 1. The very basic = 5 disks
> 2. With minimal X , say   8 disks
...more like 12
> 3. With most editors, say  10 disks
...more like 19
> 4. With useful utilities say 13 disks
...more like 30
> 5. nearly complete, say 30 disks
...more like 80

I'm sorry, I don't think that your idea is practical. Remember that the 
whole idea of having base disks is to get a system installed that is able 
to boot, and is able to install new packages.

Steve Early
sde1000@cam.ac.uk