Re: Debian installer questions...

On Wed, Aug 13, 2003 at 09:39:39AM -0700, Heather Stern wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 13, 2003 at 09:15:15AM -0700, Heather Stern wrote:
> > On Tue, Jul 22, 2003 at 07:05:00PM -0400, Tom von Schwerdtner wrote:
> > > Greetings all,
> > > 
> > >     On the topic of a Debian installer....
> > > 
> > >     1) I understand there used to be one...what happend to it?
> >  
> > There used to be 2, one utterly undocumented.
> > 
> > In the 1.618 they no longer work because the debian world has moved too
> > far away from what they expect to see.  Slink is only available from the
> > more ancient archives, and woody is drastically different from what it
> > saw as testing at the time, even for base.
> > 
> > In the new one we had several plans for doing something that would
> > survive the test of time ... well, at least until that debian flavor was
> > moved to the ancient archives.  Storing a base tarball on the 2.x
> > plastic is out of the question - for that much space, we could ship
> > mozilla as our web browser.
> > 
> > >     2) Ideas for a new installer?
> > > 
> > >         a) Anyone looked at using debchroot?  
> > >             I've installed a number of debian systems with it and it works
> > >             quite well (seems perfect for the task).
>   
> I'm advised that debchroot is a rather old name for an early rendition
> of debootstrap.
> 
> Debootstrap was one of the 2 installers on 1.618.  Its dependency on
> knowing the names of the packages that comprise base became its eventual
> doom.

http://cvs.lnx-bbc.org/cvs/gar/special/debootstrap/

Works for me, kinda sorta.  It just punts on all the really hard
stuff, but is handy to have for unpacking the basedebs.tar one
has downloaded, as it saves one from having to also go hunt down
a debootstrap .deb, download it, explode the archive with ar x,
and untar the data.tar.gz file.
 
You have to partition things yourself, format your filesystems,
mount them up, download basedebs.tar from somewhere, then point
debootstrap to basedebs.tar and the target partition.

What the package in its current state needs is setting PATH to
include /usr/bin and /usr/sbin, which are expected by stock
debootstrap and missing from the lnx-bbc default PATH.  The
package also needs a better install-custom rule.  Most GAR
install rules rely on the upstream's install method, whereas
debootstrap has no such thing.  Should probably be a long series
of install and install -d statements.

Anyway, once debootstrap has basedebs.tar installed, one can
chroot to the target and set up /etc/apt/sources.list and
install the kernel-image of choice, generally, providing one has
set up networking already within the outer lnx-bbc context.  You
still have to know which kernel to install, and which modules,
and how to put together an initrd if need, true.  



> Other "package" partial installers for debian include: replicator,
> pbuilder (which I think deps on modern debootstrap), fai (too big),
> and "snarf a really big tarball".
> 
> > The checklist of hard parts in an installer.
> >   1. partitioning.  don't forget a swap.
> >      ...the model of "you should do this part yourself" is very geeky,
> >      but it doesn't work for everyone.
> >   2. snarfing the kernel you're currently booted from and putting it in.
> >      ...this turns out to be *really* hard - the lnx-bbc's initrd is 
> >      wired up for seeking out the cdrom and mounting a cloop.
> >   3. dumping bits in.  whose bits, from where?
> >      ...in our case we can't be lazy like knoppix and just dump
> >      ourselves in, sicne it wouldn't be debian.  Though it would be 
> >      Linux.
> >   4. setting new root user, net setup, and other "firstboot" actions.
> > 
> > The concept appears to be that we'll create a garpkg for it - thus
> > anyone with a 2.x bbc should be able to download it at will - but we've
> > all been bogged with other things which seem to have priority.  
> > 
> > I'm vaguely tempted to steal some logic from knoppix' knx-hdinstall now
> > that it's seen a little debugging, where the baseline for what gets
> > dumped in is from Sneakum's chroot build environment.
> > 
> > We welcome new developers to the team, so if you'd like to package
> > debchroot for the GAR tree, let us know when you've got something that
> > builds locally, and one of the committers could graft it in.
> 
> You'll probably find that there's no decent upstream source for
> debchroot, and the GAR mechanism depends on being able to get the
> sources from upstream.  But feel free to experiment, if you're inclined
> to play with a local copy of the LNX-BBC source tree.
>  
> >   . | .   Heather Stern                  |         [email protected]
> > --->*<--- Starshine Technical Services - * - [email protected]
> >   ' | `   Sysadmin Support and Training  |        (800) 938-4078
> > 
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