Re: use of dbootstrap and debootstrap
On Sun, Sep 07, 2003 at 04:06:34PM -0700, Joey Harrison wrote:
> Looking through the Debian installation and reference manuals, I found
> references to both dbootstrap and debootstrap. What exactly are they,
> what is the difference between them, and why is there a debootstrap
> package, but no dbootstrap package.
They're completely different. The name near-clash is slightly
unfortunate.
dbootstrap is the menu interface part of the old installation system
("boot-floppies", which is being replaced in our next release) which
runs before you reboot into the newly installed system and lets you
configure things like partitions and kernel modules. In the new
installed ("debian-installer") it'll be split into lots of smaller
components for flexibility and ease of maintenance, which will be kicked
off from a "main-menu" package.
debootstrap unpacks a Debian base system from scratch from .deb packages
it downloads from a Debian mirror site. It doesn't have an interface
other than a few command-line arguments. The installation system uses
this to put together the system into which you eventually reboot. Once
upon a time this was done by unpacking special compressed archives with
names like "base2_2.tgz"; however, this got to be a bit of a pain for
releases because somebody had to rebuild and upload this enormous
tarball every time a base package changed, so debootstrap was written
instead. It has the side benefit that you can install a miniature Debian
system, perhaps for an earlier release, inside an installed system and
use 'chroot' to get at it, which is incredibly useful if you're doing
things like autobuilding packages or "sidegrading" from a different
distribution to Debian.
There's no separate package for dbootstrap because it's part of
boot-floppies.
Cheers,
--
Colin Watson [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]
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