[RULE] Slinky 0.4.04

[Ingo Lantschner]

On Wed, 20 Oct 2004 06:47:36 +0200, M. Fioretti <mfioretti>  
wrote:


> (Ingo, please let me know if there are problems to update the
> documentation on the website)
no problems yet, as soon as we have a stable Slinky I post the docs in  
SPIP(?)-Format to the site directly.


> Does it work (at least in theory, as in "is it worth to test") with
> net installs? FTP, NFS, HTTP, whatever?
Netinstalls work - but I have still some problems with Lilo, so the final  
system does not boot. This is mostly due to my limited knowledge in  
Lilo/Booting/Rescue-disks - so someone else may get over this.


> 2) are you using the --nodocs (or something like that) option of rpm?
>    It skips installation of documentation, thus reducing final size
>    even more
hmh, intersting, I will try, ...

> 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
Well, the main advantage of running all packages with one command is, that  
rpm takes care of sorting them. If there is an other way in doing this  
sorting in the $LIST (automated - NOT by trial and error) than the above  
suggestion would be fine.
The idea of calling all packages at once has been introduced by me: The  
background is, that since Fedora updates its versions quiet often, and the  
U in RULE stands for Up-to-date, we should have a straight-forward-process  
of integrating new FC-Versions into Slinky. I thought (correct me if I am  
wrong) the most fast solution is, to take, what the Fedora-Project already  
provides: The package-list of its minimal-install, by installing it once  
with anaconda on a stronger system, runing "rpm -qa > minirpms.txt" on  
that machine and fetching minirpms.txt into Slinky - finished. So 30  
Minutes after FC x has been released - we can offer an updated Slinky  -  
this is realy Up-to-date :-) The drawback is, that due to my way of  
finding the corresponding file-names ("ls /mnt/cdrom | grep -f  
minirpms.txt >> packagelist_4_slinky" *) ) I have the list in alphabetical  
order - which produces an endless flow of dependency-errors when each rpm  
is installed by itself. To solve this problem I asked Franz to change  
Slincky in the way, that it calls all packages on one rpm-commandline. (In  
order to allow CD-installs this must be diveded into 4 calls, one for each  
CD-ROM)

*) this assumes that the FC-CD is mounted - to be more precisely: This  
command must be called 4 times, one time with each CD mounted.


> However, this is a secondary issue. First let's stabilize slinky for
> FC3, the corresponding package list, and kdrive immediately after.
I fully agree with this - I think here the 80-20-rule can be used: With  
20% of effort we will get 80% of what can be achived. Also I would like to  
ask others from RULE, if we have to prepare Slinky so that it can install  
on smaller disks than one GB? (My experience is, that even donated HW  
never has smaller disks than 1 GB - and buying such HD is impossible)

> Note that nobody prevents the user to create and run his own
> trim-$package scripts post install, at first login.
Even from within Slinky using rulerc and/or postinst.sh this can be  
automated.

> 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.
Thats clear - and should be taken into account.

Bye, Ingo.


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