Re: Elks Distribution

Javier Sedano
2002-05-24T14:16:27Z

Neil Holmes wrote:
>
> Are there any fixes around for this that I may be missing ?
>

There has been a discussion about it in the last days, so I suppose
they are working on it.

>
> I have now moved onto looking for some sort of a challenge for myself that I
> may be able to contribute to the project. My C skills are not to the
> standard of the majority of the contributors here. Hence I am not so
> comfortable at low levels. I noticed, though, in the documentation that
> Question 1.3 says "Are there any ready-to-run distributions of ELKS". The
> answer says no and goes on to invite interest to build something. Is this
> still the case ? Are there no distributions ?
>

As far as I know, nobody is working on it, so your work will be
appreciated.

> During the course of my experimenting I have been playing with scripts that
> install ELKS to the hard drive from a root and boot floppy. I guess this is
> the start of a distribution ? My current script will only run, so far, into
> /dev/bda1. It was devised as a way to save me some time really.
>

On my side, it is a danger, since I have MSDOS-win30 in bda1 and Minix
in bda2, so I need to change to bda3

> I am currently trying to persuade my script to setup the hard drive to boot.
> I did it manually so I expect I will soon have it working from my install
> routine too. In due course I may well re-write the script in, perhaps C ?

I wouldn't do so. Scripts are slower, and sometimes larger, but much
easier to modify (just mount the floppy under UNIX/Linux and edit it). I
would advice scripts, if I were asked.

> I
> would also like to make the Install Floppy Disk be for a 0.1.0 system but
> the problems that I outlined at the head of this message prevent that just
> now.
>

One hint: keep two distribution. A stable, with that you know that
(almost) works. And publish it in the web page. And keep working on
other, published here (and as alpha/beta in the web, if you want), until
it reaches stable state.

> Is what I have been up to of interest. Maybe good for less technical people
> who want a first look at Elks ?
>

I think so.

--
El trabajo en equipo es esencial, te permite echarle la culpa a otro.
--------
Javier Sedano Jarillo http://www.it.uc3m.es/~jsedano
jsedano@dit.upm.es (*)
jsedano@ieee.org