Re: new boot floppies

[bruce@pixar.com (Bruce Perens)]

> Does this imply that dftp (or the functionality thereof) has been
> merged into dselect?  That would be good.

There is an experimental package called dpkg-ftp which provides "dselect"
with another "installation method" called "ftp". When you install this,
you can select the "ftp" installation method in the installation methods
menu, and then "dselect" will get the Packages file and all requested
packages via FTP instead of requiring you to move them by yourself.

This is really cool when it works correctly, but so far it's been less
Than robust. That's what we are working on now.

Another thing we're going to try is to provide the "installation root"
and the base floppies in a publicly-readable NFS partition accessable
via Internet. If you have a system on a LAN that has access to
Internet, this will allow you to install Debian with exactly _one_
floppy, the boot floppy, because the root floppy will be mounted via
NFS, the base floppies and kernel will be on that same NFS filesystem,
and the dpkg-ftp method will work to get the rest of the system.

	Thanks

	Bruce
--
Pixar's Toy Story: Over 1/3 Billion dollars world box office so far.

Bruce Perens AB6YM          Bruce@Pixar.com            http://www.hams.com/