[RULE] slinky-0.5.03 for Fedora Core 4 FC4

[Richard Kweskin]

On Thu, 15 Sep 2005 13:30:04 +0300
Richard Kweskin <rkwesk at hellug.gr> wrote:

> Thank you Franz!
> 
> I will try to test this next week.
> 
> Richard
>
Hello All

Sorry, it has taken this long to sit and write about Slinky 0.5.03. The good news is that I have managed, using this version of Slinky, to install fc4 on a few p1 boxes, all with 32MB of ram, all using an ide cdrom drive. All successful attempts initially start with Slinky and only the base list of rpm's (no additional options.)

Now that our lug has a lab with Internet access giving download speeds from 20 to 120 kb per second (a very new phenomenon in my life!) it suited me to start with this minimum, add yum (and its remaining dependencies: elfutils, rpm-python, libxml2-python, python-urlgrabber, python-sqlite, python-elementtree and libxml2) do a yum update to replace many of these rpm's with newer versions and go on to use yum install nfs-utils, xorg-x11, abiword, icewm, sylpheed, firefox (and perhaps samba) which results in yum finding all the other rpm's needed to arrive at a bang uptodate system. The result, however, is a bit more than 1 GB of a footprint. Adding kdrive and eliminating the /usr/X11/bin/Xorg server and trimming some other bits and pieces helps a bit so the system can "walk" at a pace one can live with but there is still the footprint size  :((

The bad news (with Slinky 0.5.03) is that the choosing of certain options in addition to the base, i.e. the minimum, is not processed properly. For example, choose xorg packages only, in addtion to the base. The rpm xorg-x11 itself is on the second cd. The install never uses this cd (in this particular combination, base + xorg - and nothing more.) Another example is base + network - and nothing else, where it should use the third cd. However, if one chooses base + ppp or base + sendmail or base + ppp + sendmail which only needs cd1, it works without a problem. I am not sure but I think if one chooses several options + base then some combinations do work properly, the second and third cd's are used.

It may just be that although Slinky happily allows one to choose, say base + xorg - and nothing else, one should also have chosen other options (sorry, here my ignorance has even become painfully obvious to me also) so the logic may be breaking down because of that, I cannot say.

I am writing this now, although all the jucy details are somewhere else (I know, I know) out of guilt for not having reported back to the list sooner. I will come back and quote install logs, etc. but perhaps this bit of news will be of some use.

Just a quick mention, also, that as almost everyone else in my lug uses Debian, I borrowed a cd which does a basic install of Debian Testing (less than 200MB of disk footprint, if I remember well) which includes recognising the nic and allowing one to install (after a reboot) from the lan/Internet using apt-get. If the same combination of additional deb's are installed (apt, like yum, finds all the dependencies without any further info from the user) as I mentioned above, the resulting footprint is less than 600MB - compared to the over 1 GB with fc4. Of course Fedora means much newer versions than Debian Testing of almost everything, including the kernel 2.6.13, udev and others, but it is still true to say that the debs are built with much more economy in mind than the comparable rpm. Perhaps it would be much more appropriate to compare Umbuntu, say with fc4 than the aging Testing but I need to research more on how to manage this.

Sorry for the ramblings and the length, Richard

_______________________________________________
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