Fwd: Debian Installer etch beta 1 released

[Brian M. Carlson]

On Saturday 12 November 2005 16:55, Aurelien Jarno wrote:
> Robert Millan a écrit :
> > Does this mean we're out of time for porting d-i?  Maybe we'll have to
> > stick
>
> 2 or 3 more release of d-i are planned before the etch release.
>
> > with FreeBSD installer for the etch release (it could be easily hacked to
> > use debootstrap, remove FreeBSD-specific portions, etc).
> >
> > What do you think?

I think that releasing with etch is very ambitious.  I was thinking we might 
shoot for etch+1.  However, I think that the SCC archive for etch is not a 
bad idea.  This means that we need to be slightly more assertive about 
getting fixes included.

> If that happens, I mean if we are not able to port d-i quite enough, I
> think it would be better to make an unofficial patched version of d-i.
> We are all short on time, so it is better to work on the final installer
> than on an intermediate one.

d-i depends on bogl (source), which is very Linux-specific.  I"m trying to 
patch out the Linux-specific bits into a bogl-linux.[ch] and create a 
bogl-freebsd.[ch] (since all it cares about are devices and ioctls).  This 
will break the API, but in a compatible way (we're only adding functions, so 
we can bump shlibs).  Or we could simply make the bogl_os_ symbols (which I 
implemented) static with a versioning script.  Either way, this will help not 
only us, but also other non-Linux ports.

Ben Pfaff (bogl's upstream) is not interested in any major changes (of any 
type), so the bogl port will probably be Debian-specific.

Then, we'd have to port busybox, syslinux (or some other ISO booter), 
dosfsutils, parted, and discover1.  I think that's it.

I'm still unclear abot upx-ucl-beta, which compresses executables.  I'm not 
sure if our kernel supports that, or if it just happens on the fly (in which 
case the kernel doesn't have to support it).  We may have to patch it to 
support bootable FreeBSD kernels.

Other things we have to do include porting kFreeBSD 6.0, fixing the kernel and 
libc so that we can use RT signals (patch in the BTS, kernel *must* be fixed 
first), and moving ld.so.1 from address 0.  I will reboot in a second and try 
the new kernel for RT signals, and report to the BTS.  When we've 
accomplished these things, we should report to -devel.

-- 
Brian M. Carlson <sandals at crustytoothpaste.ath.cx>
Running on GNU/kFreeBSD
Support alternative kernels in Debian!