Google Summer of Code

[Daniel Mróz]

On Saturday 03 of March 2007 21:50:42 Marcin Król wrote:
> > Yes, but that was because text mode installer was broken for some time
> > (remember that reports about kernel-grsecurity package?)
> No. It never was installers fault. It was always working ok. That was
> always PLD fault.
I know and I don't blame the installer as an application. By "installer" I 
mean all of this: application and package sets.

> Besides, current text mode installer has some serious limitations. To
> name most important one: diskette size. I'm unable to include de_DE
> translation due to lack of free space. Kernel 2.6 will never made it
> onto bootdisks too due to its hue size. With 2.4 squeezed to about 660
> KBs of bootdisk you barely have 1.2 MB for all installer files and base
> kernel modules (cdrom, isofs, floppy, ext2, generic ide etc.). Thats
> quite little space you know.
Maybe it's time to drop diskette installation support and switch to CD/DVD 
only? I know that this would hurt the owners of the older machines (with no 
CD/DVD drive and no USB port for external ones; sorry Ethanak), but Linux 
becomes larger and larger, so constantly fitting it into 1.44MB size slowly 
starting to be hard to achieve. Let's kill that old technology. It's time for 
pendrive revolution! ;)
BTW, I was fighting with modern Sun servers lately, that had no floppy, CD or 
DVD drive. The only way to install some operating system on it was network or 
USB. Maybe that's the new future of server machines?

> Also installer design wasn't that good. I admit, there are still some
> things that could be put into it, but if you wan't to create some text
> mode installation you'd better write it from scratch or better take
> intereset in anaconda. If you'll decide to continue current text mode
> installer when I'll drop it be ready to include some ugly hacks or
Better not. My installer would be text-only, with no curses interface and 
rather minimal ;)  Just like instalka long time ago. I've started to make my 
own installation scripts since all steps are quite the same in all cases 
(boot from RCD, modprobe, fdisk, mkfs, mount, poldek, chroot, vim, umount, 
reboot, be happy).


Regards
Beorn

-- 
Daniel 'Beorn' Mróz <beorn w alpha.pl>    http://127.0.0.1/beorn
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