Hey, I totally agree on all points, ive been thinking about installing options on a panda. I am using a n 8 and 16 GB SD card, now the panda does have the ability to tftp / PXE and boot from SD.
So an installer of some description could be performed, perhaps the simplest would be a pxe boot to boot a minimalistc image to bring up the 10/100 ethernet and install over the internet from a repo. You have to be careful I think with SD card partitioning as fat is required for MLO Uboot / Kernel combo and then the root for the linux stuff ( ext3 jffs or something similar ). I think it would make sense to have a decent default set. Then the installation would take place there after installing the current release. .. I have enough equipment here at the house to perform something here and atleast get enough built to get something going. The panda is quite advanced vs say the Pi its a Dual Core A9 @ 1.2Ghz and has Neon Hard Float and all the trimmings. My question to that end is I was looking at using the linao gcc toolchain for this one as they seem to have the best speed / results for this board, is there any preference / thoughts on this?. I think this thread has been very positive thanks for your time. Nige On Sun, Feb 10, 2013 at 1:59 PM, Stuart Winter <[email protected]>wrote: > > Hi Nigel, > > > So maybe do an image that then starts off running the ncurses slackware > > configuration tool to setup networking / wifi etc etc. may require some > > changes / additions for wpa_supplicant. Under all distro's ive tested > with > > none deal with wpa_supplicant, so it requires manual editing. > > > > What do you think? > > I think the concept is great for systems upon which the installer > cannot be used, but what's the real purpose of not using the installer on > systems where it can be? To me, the Slackware installer should be able to > run on almost anything since it's a light weight curses installer. You can > almost (if you're careful) install via the serial console. > > I provide the installer for systems where the device has an integrated or > directly connected 'hard drive'. Therefore the thought is that you're not > going to open your device to connect it to an x86 just so you can write a > disk image to it. Instead, you boot the installer and install upon the > local disk. > > For systems that run off a compact flash (or similar) only, I can see the > point in supplying a disk image, however. If there's a trend of demand > towards disk images, a 'first boot' (as they do in Red Hat) could certainly > be done (by someone!) where it'd run the /var/log/setup scripts and as you > said, run the normal config scripts that are usually run after the > installer has finished installing the packages. > > Whoever maintains support of a community supported device (i.e. not one I > maintain in the main tree), they're really free to make the best choices > for that environment; but I'd still prefer to have a uniform installation > process using the Slackware installer where possible. This way it also > hopefully means that there's consistency in stuff that works and that > doesn't. When there are images floating around that are made in a > non-deterministic way, or with modifications that are unknown about > upstream, then it potentially opens the doors to a breakage. > > Whilst I am thinking about it, if developers are making changes, it'd be > useful to let us know on this list (may be making another -devel list in > the future if the volume is high). At the moment I > occasionally take a look at what people are doing with the Raspberry Pi in > order to try and > keep the users able to use -current. For example: since the RPi uses an > older kernel than provided in the main tree, I need to try and make sure I > remember not > to recompile glibc with a requirement on a kernel that's not newer than > they're using. > > I don't know the status of Eric's ARM hard float port, but the issues will > be the same so it'll be interesting to see how best practices etc develop > for this, the current Slackware ARM soft float port. > _______________________________________________ > ARMedslack mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.armedslack.org/mailman/listinfo/armedslack > -- “Science is a differential equation. Religion is a boundary condition.” Alan Turing
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