+++ Dave Martin [2011-06-01 15:56 +0100]: > Separate question how big is Debian-installer, in terms of filesystem > and RAM footprint?
There are various flavours. Primarily: 1) a 'full' image which is 160MB and includes the base system that is installed (so you can get a system without network access), 2) a minimal image which is 33MB and needs a network to download the packages to be installed. 3) initrd-based headless installers for various arm boxes which vary from 4.5 to 18Mb (including kernel) e.g: http://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/stable/main/installer-armel/current/images/kirkwood/netboot/marvell/openrd/ The D-I system is very flexible. But it does depend on the building of udebs (minimal versions of debs which are used to make installed bootable images). You could make a rather fatter installer out of normal debs, but that would preclude the initrd flavour. I don't know how much ram is needed, but it works on the 32Mb NSLU2 so 'not much', at least in headless form. More for the GUI version. > If we can move the entire installation system to a ramfs on boot, we can > unmount and free up the boot device, allowing the system to be installed > in-place. This is possible. On most of the currently-supported-by-debian arm devices a console and some uboot runes are required to get things installed and defaulting to booting off the desired device. Some (such as thecus n2100) support a web+ssh install: http://www.cyrius.com/debian/iop/n2100/install.html Things are somewhat simplified if we are only worrying about devices which already boot from USB or SD/MMC. > This might also require Linux's idea of which devices are "removable" > to be overridden though, so that they can be repartitioned > without a reboot. I think the kernel hard-codes this for some of our > boards currently; i.e., the boot SD slot may be considered non- > removable. I don't know how easy it is do get around this. This is only a problem if repartitioning is needed. Wookey -- Principal hats: Linaro, Emdebian, Wookware, Balloonboard, ARM http://wookware.org/ _______________________________________________ linaro-dev mailing list linaro-dev@lists.linaro.org http://lists.linaro.org/mailman/listinfo/linaro-dev
