Marcus Brinkmann wrote: > > Using a Hurd ramdisk for the installation. (Nice, but not vital) > > That involves porting the new Debian installer to get done properly, and > probably CD boot support in Grub? >
As far as the new debian installer is concerned, ive been working on implementing some installer components into busybox, im currently working on anna (anna's not nearly apt). Once i get a floppy retriever working i will have a go at getting it working under the Hurd. Ive havent done anything with busybox and the Hurd for ages now, but i havent forgotten about it. Partitioning was the going to be the biggest problem, so its good to see that under control. Obvious differences that will arise for core installer components are The core installer components will need to understand settrans to do things like mount, ifconfig. I was thinking of maybe putting a wrapper around settrans to enable consistent handling.... not sure about this idea though. Different build tools, the Hurd will obviously need to be built differently than the linux boot disks, different OS files, filesystems etc. Size may be more of an issue under the Hurd as well, for linux will are aiming to get the kernel and core components onto 1 floppy. uClibc helps a lot under linux, it saves a few hunder kB compared to glibc. These are all minor problems compared to the previous showstopper of not being able to partition. Glenn