[RULE] Slinky 0.4.04

[M. Fioretti]

On Tue, Oct 19, 2004 11:47:52 AM +0200, Ingo Lantschner
 ingo.lists at vum.at  wrote:
 
> Hi all,
> Franz just informed me that a new Slinky is on his page:
> http://www.fzk.at/SLINKY/
> 
> * only one floppy needed to install
> * call rpm only once for every one of the 4 FC3-discs (so all packages are  
> on one line allowing rpm to sort them)
> * don't use --nodeps option with rpm
> * busybox-1.00 (not -rc3)
> 
> I just tested it, and there are still some problems but I think they
> can be resolved soon. So this mail is mainly to let you know that we
> still work on it.

OK, great! Congratulations and thanks!

(Ingo, please let me know if there are problems to update the
documentation on the website)

Does it work (at least in theory, as in "is it worth to test") with
net installs? FTP, NFS, HTTP, whatever?

I will download the FC3 images next weekend and give it a try. In the
meantime:

1) which is the current package list? Please send it to me offlist
2) are you using the --nodocs (or something like that) option of rpm?
   It skips installation of documentation, thus reducing final size
   even more
3) there is one drawback, minor in most cases, of calling rpm once per
   disc as said above. Months ago we said that slinky could be
   modified to work like this (in pseudo-shell language):

	    foreach package in $LIST

		    rpm -i $package
		    run trim-$package if trim-$package exists
		    goto next $package

Where trim-$package would be a script from RULE which removes other
unnecessary files from within that packages, or performs other
optimizations/configuration. Maybe an upgrade of Eugene's vacuum
script, see sw section on the web site.

However, this is a secondary issue. First let's stabilize slinky for
FC3, the corresponding package list, and kdrive immediately after.
Note that nobody prevents the user to create and run his own
trim-$package scripts post install, at first login.

The advantage of using such scripts in the manner described above is
that it keeps, in any moment during install, total disk space at the
minimum possible value. Otherwise it might stop along the road
because, say, installing the standard emacs package fills the disk
immediately, even if you had planned to remove 80% of it afterwards.

Again, however, this is a secondary issue. Just nothing it now to keep
track, and remember what was discussed.

Thanks again,
			Marco Fioretti

-- 
Marco Fioretti                    mfioretti, at the server mclink.it
Red Hat & Fedora for low memory   http://www.rule-project.org/

Those who will be able to conquer software will be able to conquer the
world.                      -- Tadahiro Sekimoto, president, NEC Corp.

_______________________________________________
Original home page of the RULE project: www.rule-project.org
Rule-list at rule-project.org
http://mail.rule-project.org/mailman/listinfo/rule-list_rule-project.org