CD organization (was Re: InfoMagic's new LDR)
RE: this product in general:
What would be expected? The product contains multiple
distributions and is not oriented towards Debian. The vendor has quite a
range of products. Those who want Debian Linux should get it from vendors
who use Debian, like Debian, advocate Debian, breathe Debian, eat Debian,
and even dream Debian. I see that one vendor (not Debian-oriented) is now
offering a weekly release for $35. My answer to this is to offer a fresh
for much less. By fresh I mean that I will "freeze" the mirror as
often as possible. Usually daily, but you can't always count on the ftp
sites you mirror from.
On Tue, 13 May 1997 tgakem@chem.tue.nl wrote:
> I just looked at another tiny point:
>
> $ df /cdrom
> Filesystem 1024-blocks Used Available Capacity Mounted on
> /dev/hdd 663260 663260 0 100% /cdrom
>
> Does anyone know how much fits on one CD? I'd guess this one
681984000 bytes raw / 1024 = 666000 blocks
there is some overhead used for the iso9660 filesystem
> (InfoMagic's Debian CD) is quite close to the limit. On the CD there is
> a project directory:
> I guess this could be done away with. If you want to use experimental
> stuff, you probably should get updates from the internet quite
People who want source/experimental/developmental CD's want them in order
to save space and bandwidth
> regularly. Imo, a CD should be a solid, working set of packages that
> you can rely upon. In the README.cds file in the root, it specifies
> which files to omit when making a one-CD distribution of the stable
> release. I think the project directory should be omitted. However, as
> it stands, it won't be possible anymore to put Debian on one CD within a
> short period of time. It should probably be suggested to put binary and
> source directories on separate CD-s. Also it appears possible that the
> current omissions are due to the fact that these packages simply didn't
> fit on the disk. In that case, Infomagic should have noticed it.
>
> Any thoughts on this one?
Yes, it is better to have more available packages even if it requires a
second CD.
But dependencies have to be analyzed to organize a CD set. If people have
problems installing packages because a depency is on the unmounted volume,
this list will get busier.
CD 1 boot/install/base - Put everything on this for installing a new
system or upgrading the base packages of an existing one. Multiple
releases and target architectures could probably fit on this.
CD 2 binary packagemaster - Put the rest of the binaries here for a target
platform. The idea is that after basics are taken care of, this one has
all the stuff that dselect/dpkg looks for.
Now fill in the remaining space on CD 1 and 2 with miscellaneous extras
CD n.. Additional source, docs, etc.
thought - Perhaps the new dselect will go through a collection/unpack
phase which will allow a mix of CD's, already downloaded updates, and ftp
access. I considered the symlink approach, but think that a database would
work best. This would also help for the creation of customized package
sets. I would like the idea of putting good skeletal package sets on a CD
and ftp site for typical orientations (webserver, lanserver, workstation,
router/gateway, etc????).
thought - I suppose that machines like the Alpha compile very fast. If we
had a dselect "install and build from source" option, then fast platforms
would need fewer precompiled target binaries. They would use the universal
source CD for adding packages. Along this line, my 386 takes hours to
build a kernel. I wouldn't be happy if this was the only machine I had and
I received a distribution that was "source oriented". I usually create
Debian packages on faster machines and then install the binaries on the
slower ones.
afterthought - the previously mentioned "collection/unpack" phase would
help in 2 other ways:
binary-all might be on the other CD
unstable contains symlinks to frozen and/or stable (other CD)
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
+ Paul Wade Greenbush Technologies Corporation +
+ mailto:paulwade@greenbush.com http://www.greenbush.com/ +
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
+ http://www.greenbush.com/cds.html Linux CD's sent worldwide! +
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
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