Re: kernel size

[Hamish Moffatt <moffatt@yallara.cs.rmit.EDU.AU>]

> I like your suggestion of configuring packages as a separate step. The
> option in dselect to 'configure remaining unconfigured packages' could
> handle this, instead of the 'install selected packages' option. In this
> scenario, the 'install' option would became 'load packages' and all
> configuration would be relegated to the 'configure' option. If something
> goes wrong during configuration, you can just re-run dselect and hit the
> configure option. Good Idea.

One thing I find a bit annoying with dselect/dpkg is the way it checks
the version of EVERY package when you pick Install. Last night I did
an NFS installation (and the remote source was from CD-ROM), and this
step was very slow. Can anything be done about this, eg trusting
the packages list instead of looking for newer versions, or whatever?

Also, how does dselect cope if it doesn't have the root debian tree?
For the past few days I've been fiddling a lot and I've had the
Debian CD in my CD-ROM drive all the time, but I'm about to lend it
to someone. Will dselect still work with nothing but a local directory,
or should I just use dpkg by hand?



thanks,
Hamish