On Thu, 1 Feb 2001, Marcus Brinkmann wrote: > On Thu, Feb 01, 2001 at 06:53:01AM +0000, Philip Charles wrote: > > My objective was to get a functioning HURD installation CD(s) out the door > > and available as quickly as possible. > > If you can do that without investing too much time, this is helpful > as an interim solution. > Otherwise I would suggest to concentrate on the new installer.
The HURD E1 insatllation CDs are on their way to Budapest today. At the moment I am working with boot-floppies 2.2.17 as I know they work. > > Boot Floppies. (I am talking about the Debian package) > > > > Creating base*.tgz (the tarball) is easily separated out from boot > > floppies and I am treating this separately. At the moment I am doing some > > work on this part, and at this stage it seems that it needs to be created > > on a HURD system. > > Please be more specific about why it seems so. I can only assume that the > script producing the base.tgz runs some script (probably in a chroot) that > expect to be able to execute programs from the base files themselve. In this > case, yes, this needs to run natively. > > One of the things that would be helpful here, btw, is to modify > tar to be able to read and write translator settings, so we can put the > "device files" in the base file and have tar installing them at extraction > time. This is as complex as adding symlink support to tar (which is already > done), but you don't read/write symlinks but passive translators. The problem I am encountering is that I get segmentaion faults when I try to install HURD packages onto the false root partition when using Linux, despite using --force-architecture. I was attempting to find a way of getting the translators into the tarball. I have not tried --unpack under Linux. > > Boot/root disks are easy to create for HURD. They use Linux at the moment > > and I see no real reason to change to using the HURD. > > There are a couple of reasons, at least: Install and use translators in > the install program. Proof that the Hurd really is self contained. As the > root disk is also the rescue disk, having a real Hurd system is not > unimportant (in the long run). As the translators will be in the tarball using a Linux ramdisk to unpack it onto the HURD partition should work. I agree totally about the HURD becoming self-contained (the purity issue) and I see the creation of the tarball within the HURD as the first stage. To be realy useful the installation scheme needs to have cfdisk available. > I definitely want Hurd boot/root disks, but using Linux disks for now is ok > (the new installer should have hurd disks though). > > I think you are talking about the potato/woody installer, not the new one, > right? It's okay to butcher that to your liking, as with the new installer > we will have a better chance to do it right. Because of my limited programming skills I need to work from a stable base. I introduce enough of my own bugs without having to worry about other people's. When the new installer comes out in a stable form ... > > debian-cd (Again I am talking about the Debian package) > > > > The butchered scripts are messy at the moment, and will continue to be so > > for some time I suspect. The HURD is very much under development and so > > the scripts are full of work-a-rounds and these change every few weeks. > Yes. There are two issues. Debian stuff needs to seperate between hurd and > linux all/any packages (the old issue), and the Hurd in general needs to be > more complete and uptodate. These are two issues I am not going to have anything to do with, I will leave them to my betters. Phil. - Philip Charles; 39a Paterson St., Dunedin, New Zealand; +64 3 4882818 Mobile 025 267 9420. I sell GNU/Linux CDs. See http://www.copyleft.co.nz
