> For installing new computers it would be nice to have a possibility for
> automatic partitioning from a description file, as it is possible with
> sfdisk. What about including it?
This has come up before, probably there will always only be fdisk on the
default configuration. It will be impossible to justify more than 1
fdisk, and cfdisk is not going to make it, especially since I don't
include the curses library, and sfdisk is too manual for most to use as
the primary only fdisk. Personally, I think sfdisk and fdisk should be
combined, the sfdisk capability can't possibly take that much space or
make it that much bigger. Better, maybe, fdisk should just be a front end
that uses an sfdisk back end. But I'm not going to be the one to do that.
There are a couple of alternatives. One, you could figure out what sfdisk
is putting where in your automated script, and just code up a data file
for 'dd' to automate it. Ugly, but could be made to work. Two, you could
(of course) just run the unpack.s/buildit.s to customize tomsrtbt, and add
sfdisk to your own copy. Tomsrtbt is supposed to be easy to customize,
and installing new computers is _not_ the primary design goal, so my first
take on this kind of request is to ask whether you are having some problem
with the customization. Three, I would *like* to add something like
"expect" scripting, maybe with the "stty" program or modifying the
"script" program, of course, it has to be *much* more rudimentary than the
real "expect" program- but some way to automate full-screen stuff like
fdisk would be really nice, and more general purpose if it could automate
any arbitrary program. Does anyone have any ideas for something that
could conrol the full-screen fdisk? Fdisk should be easy, it doesn't even
use termcap, much less curses. You might even be able to control it just
with awk and a couple of pipes and put fdisk or awk in the background, but
a general solution would be nice. I'll have to experiment, but any help
in finding a sub-50byte solution to automated-fdisking is appreciated...
-Tom
