RE: Elks Distribution

["Neil Holmes" <neil.holmes@zoom.co.uk>]

Thanks for the info on curses Alan. I will look further into this.

As far as the shipped kernel is concerned. I guess that is really what I am
doing just now. Here is an area where I am a bit vague though (haven't
looked too far yet). I am assuming that, because I am setting /dev/bda1 as
the root location when I build my kernel (at this stage of development),
that this is being written into the kernel somewhere. Therefore I would need
a different kernel for each feasible root location. Either that or I need a
part of my Distribution that has to be run on the Linux machine to produce
the kernel for the install that I am doing ? This kind of goes against the
project goal. Am I missing something significant here ?

The networking, as you say, will most likely be best placed as post-install.
Possible a question after first reboot. Or maybe just something to run
later. I will get there eventually.

Packages - you may have seen my email on 0.0.3. I am now looking at figuring
things out.

Many Thanks for your help

Neil


-----Original Message-----
From: Alan Cox [mailto:alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk]
Sent: 28 May 2002 12:40
To: Neil Holmes
Cc: Riley Williams; Linux 8086
Subject: RE: Elks Distribution


On Tue, 2002-05-28 at 08:14, Neil Holmes wrote:
> 1. Bootable Install Floppy
> 	- Shell Scripting
> 		- Maybe look at some of the mini "curses" code that is lying around to
try
> and make it
> 		  look prettier later
> 			- I would appreciate some feedback on what I can do with the bcc
version
> of "curses".
> 			  I noticed it in the ELKSCMD source.

A minimal curses library normally has the 4BSD curses functions, which
let you do rectangles of display, position text and some other minimal
functionality. SYS5 "full" curses that came X/Open curses allows for
overlapping objects handled by the library, form filling, function keys
and other stuff most people don't need.

Finally (and this may be useful if ash can handle it or a hacked version
of it) some lunatic wrote a subset of curses equivalent in shell script!

> 		- How do I resolve the kernel configuration for each platform/ disk
layout
> ?
> 			- May be Linux controlled as per your information.

Historically with its big brother vendors always shipped a kernel that
worked. Might not be the best, might not be the smallest for the
hardware but it worked

> 2. SLIP Network Installation
> 	- Automatic installation of a SLIP connection and test during install
> 		- I have not really played with this yet though I do have Harry's notes
in
> my file.

You can defer a lot of stuff to post install - Debian does a lot of that
very nicely. It means you've got a working box to fight any weird
configuration funnies

As to packages. I'd suggest you figure out some kind of basic ruleset -
where the manual goes (perhaps use the existing Linux File System
Heirarchy standard), what goes in the README, where the README goes.
Then ask people to contribute packages