Re: what is missing in multistrap to build rootfs without superuser priviliges

+++ Johannes Schauer [2011-07-08 19:23 +0200]:

I seem to be a little behind reading my mail, nad have just read this
thread from July :-)

> By going step by step through the things that polystrap does, let me
> list what would have to change in multistrap to make it build foreign
> rootfs without superuser priviliges:
> 
>  - getting settings for suite, arch, rootdir, mirror, packages list
>       o this is all possible with multistrap already (NO CHANGE)
> 
>  - running multistrap
>       o obviously noting to be changed :) (NO CHANGE)
> 
>  - backup ldconfig and ldd and replace with dummies
>       o could be done by multistrap hooks (NO CHANGE)
> 
>  - copy static directory tree
>       o this could be added as a new multistrap functionality but static
>         files can as well be created by scripts that are run as hooks
>         (NO CHANGE)
> 
>  - preseed debconf
>       o multistrap does that already (NO CHANGE)
> 
>  - run preinst scripts
>       o multistrap does it (NO CHANGE)

Is this true? I thought that multistrap _didn't_ run preinst scripts
because we have no way of doing it cleanly.

Mostly this doesn't matter, but there are packages which do important
things in their pre-insts (like mysql-common which creates the mysql
user in there - (arguably a bug)). Diversions is another important
thing which multistrap works around with the 'reinstall' option, and
which should soon go away.

Does "multistrap does it" just refer to this 're-install'
functionality, or am I missing something. 

Wookey
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