Re: An idea for a new development model
Alexander E. Patrakov wrote these words on 08/16/07 00:51 CST: Slackware packages never ship configuration files that are supposed to be modified by end users. Instead, such configuration files are shipped with the .new extension, and a post-installation script handles this. This to me is way, way beyond the scope of what we do. If it ends up that we want to do something like this, I would hope it would be a separate branch, with the main thrust continuing with what we currently do. To me, there simply isn't enough development staff to attempt to be a distribution. On the LFS side, with 2-4 devs, it would be doable, in BLFS right now with the current staff, impossible. Just offering thought, so don't think I'm totally being negative, nor arguing against the idea. I'm just thinking that it adds such an enormous effort on top of what we already do, that it would soon seem insurmountable trying to keep up. -- Randy rmlscsi: [bogomips 1003.22] [GNU ld version 2.16.1] [gcc (GCC) 4.0.3] [GNU C Library stable release version 2.3.6] [Linux 2.6.14.3 i686] 00:59:00 up 4 min, 1 user, load average: 0.24, 0.42, 0.19 -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/lfs-dev FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/faq/ Unsubscribe: See the above information page
RE: An idea for a new development model
I'd like to give my opinion and 2 cents worth to this topic, even if I'm not a regular member or contributor. I've been reading the forums more regularly recently. I came across LFS 3 - 4 years ago, when I got upset with all other distributions that I had tried. Upset mainly because of their PM systems. But not so much their functionality (Debian's apt is great), but because of their dependency resolution, or lack thereof. Now, by lack thereof I don't mean that they don't resolve; they do, but the dependencies, especially for packages like GNOME or KDE, are horrendous, and not all of them necessary, as the BLFS book shows. Personally, I want a lean, fast and stable system, and when I add an application, I don't want to add 20 others, because there might be some optional things, etc. Even if you use a PM to add kdebase or the gnome core packages, you'll see an enormous list of dependencies and upon checking, you'll find that you don't need all of them. But the result is that your system gets bloated and runs more and more processes. One of the main reasons that I come back to LFS all the time and rebuild, because I've tried so many distros and none of them has really convinced me with regards to PM package dependencies. So even though the educational benefits of learning how to build LFS and a Linux system in general, aren't that big anymore, I still prefer LFS. But admittedly, I don't always have the time to rebuild or build new packages and optional applications and using a PM is more comfortable and quicker. Personally, I've tried DESTDIR and it works fine, except for the odd packages that ignore it. Because of that, when I can't be bothered investigating whether a package supports it or not, I fall back to simply building the package in the normal way and then just looking at the difference in files created on the file system. Yes, maybe not the most advanced way, but it works smoothly. Takes a bit more time because you have to wait a bit between builds, but hey. And I've created and am still creating scripts to automate builds and that will resolve build dependencies. Works well, except for the dependencies yet. My thoughts after that were to create some kind of PM, whether source based or binary based or both. With regards to whether or not a PM should be part of LFS, I am taking the pragmatic approach. So, it doesn't necessarily have to. I would almost go as far as to say that the Linux world is spoiled by having a PM (while I am aware that this is probably one of the reasons why it has grown in popularity), because look at Windows or Mac OS X. Where's their PM? And people are still using these OSs. Mac OS X is a great OS, and it comes pre-packaged with most things you need. If you want more, you go and search and find it (yes, I know there's fink, etc.). OK, this might be a bit OT, but I wanted to give my input here as well, as I'm trying to give more to the LFS community. I've actually had thoughts of going towards an LFS based distribution, because I'm getting so upset with other distros, that would offer you a lean and fast environment, with a DE of choice and all the necessary applications to do your day to day business. But not five of each ... I don't want/need 5 different word processors or chat applications or the like; just want one that works well and is well integrated. Part of that distro could be a PM, although I personally don't think that to be so much of a big topic, if the rest of the distro offers everything you need, is not bloated and runs smoothly. Any thoughts on this welcome and I hope I didn't intrude on this topic too much. ___ Jetzt neu! Schützen Sie Ihren PC mit McAfee und WEB.DE. 3 Monate kostenlos testen. http://www.pc-sicherheit.web.de/startseite/?mc=00 -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/lfs-dev FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/faq/ Unsubscribe: See the above information page
Re: An idea for a new development model
Randy McMurchy wrote: Alexander E. Patrakov wrote these words on 08/16/07 00:51 CST: Slackware packages never ship configuration files that are supposed to be modified by end users. Instead, such configuration files are shipped with the .new extension, and a post-installation script handles this. This to me is way, way beyond the scope of what we do. If it ends up that we want to do something like this, I would hope it would be a separate branch, with the main thrust continuing with what we currently do. Sure. We won't do this, because this is specific to Slackware package manager. My intention was to demonstrate to Bruce how this works, not to suggest this for the book as a mandatory part. Other package managers have a different approach to handling configuration files. E.g., RPM and dpkg support them natively, provided that they are marked as such in the spec file or listed in the debian/conffiles file. However, we should do a common part that applies to all package managers: for each package, identify and list (as we do, e.g., for installed libraries) configuration files (i.e., files that are supposed to be changed after installation by the end user or by a script that comes with a package). -- Alexander E. Patrakov -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/lfs-dev FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/faq/ Unsubscribe: See the above information page
LFS-6.3/Hints
Hello. I'm thinking about writing a Hint to build a XEN-Lfs (when I'll be back) since, at least, there's one user who asked me how to build it. So I've got a couple of questions: 1) Is LFS-6.3 going to be released sometime during next two weeks and, if not, could I use it safely (I mean no expressive changes) instead of 6.2? 2) What about Hint Project? I mean, after writing and testing the hint, posting to hint mailing list will be picked up or what? I ask because state of hint project. Regards, Luca -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/lfs-dev FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/faq/ Unsubscribe: See the above information page
Re: LFS-6.3/Hints
Luca wrote: Hello. I'm thinking about writing a Hint to build a XEN-Lfs (when I'll be back) since, at least, there's one user who asked me how to build it. So I've got a couple of questions: 1) Is LFS-6.3 going to be released sometime during next two weeks and, if not, could I use it safely (I mean no expressive changes) instead of 6.2? 2) What about Hint Project? I mean, after writing and testing the hint, posting to hint mailing list will be picked up or what? I ask because state of hint project. Regards, Luca Might want to check out VirtualBox - XenSource has just been acquired by Citrix for a very cool $500m! I don't know if this will affect xen much but Citrix are hardly known for the Open Source contributions... ;-) -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/lfs-dev FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/faq/ Unsubscribe: See the above information page
Re: LFS-6.3/Hints
- Original Message - From: Alan Lord [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: lfs-dev@linuxfromscratch.org Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2007 9:49 AM Subject: Re: LFS-6.3/Hints Might want to check out VirtualBox - XenSource has just been acquired by Citrix for a very cool $500m! I don't know if this will affect xen much but Citrix are hardly known for the Open Source contributions... ;-) Hello Alan. I'm already using VirtualBox to test projects :) About Xen I know XenSource has been acquired and soon will be released version 4 (August 20). Anyway there's XenExpress (Free Starter Package) which I'll try out; actually I tested using Xen source tarball 3.1.0 (built from scratch) and previous releases. About OpenSource contributions... well... I know... and, as you may imagine, Xen-3.1.0 is no-more available to download, just to state how the things are :) Anyway there's Open Source Xen (actually up-to-date 3.1.0 release) freely downloadable as pre-packaged and source code. Luca -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/lfs-dev FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/faq/ Unsubscribe: See the above information page
Re: LFS-6.3/Hints
Luca wrote: Hello. I'm thinking about writing a Hint to build a XEN-Lfs (when I'll be back) since, at least, there's one user who asked me how to build it. So I've got a couple of questions: 1) Is LFS-6.3 going to be released sometime during next two weeks and, if not, could I use it safely (I mean no expressive changes) instead of 6.2? It should probably be released by then. The only change I know of will be linux 2.6.22.3 and some minor text changes. I know of no instruction, bootscript, udev, etc, changes fo r6.3. 2) What about Hint Project? I mean, after writing and testing the hint, posting to hint mailing list will be picked up or what? I ask because state of hint project. We will get it into the repository. -- Bruce -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/lfs-dev FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/faq/ Unsubscribe: See the above information page
Re: LFS-6.3/Hints
- Original Message - From: Bruce Dubbs [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: LFS Developers Mailinglist lfs-dev@linuxfromscratch.org Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2007 5:14 PM Subject: Re: LFS-6.3/Hints It should probably be released by then. The only change I know of will be linux 2.6.22.3 and some minor text changes. I know of no instruction, bootscript, udev, etc, changes fo r6.3. 2) What about Hint Project? I mean, after writing and testing the hint, posting to hint mailing list will be picked up or what? I ask because state of hint project. We will get it into the repository. -- Bruce Hi Bruce and thanks for the reply :) Regards, Luca -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/lfs-dev FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/faq/ Unsubscribe: See the above information page
Re: Installing into /usr/var , should I set --localstatedir ?
On 8/16/07, Jeremy Henty [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Emacs installs stuff into /usr/var/games/emacs , but the LFS directory hierarchy doesn't include /usr/var . Should BLFS configure with --localstatedir=/var ? I would. -- Dan -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/blfs-dev FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/faq.html Unsubscribe: See the above information page
Re: Installing into /usr/var , should I set --localstatedir ?
Jeremy Henty wrote these words on 08/16/07 12:23 CST: Another issue with updating emacs. Emacs installs stuff into /usr/var/games/emacs , but the LFS directory hierarchy doesn't include /usr/var . Should BLFS configure with --localstatedir=/var ? Yes, please do. -- Randy rmlscsi: [bogomips 1003.27] [GNU ld version 2.16.1] [gcc (GCC) 4.0.3] [GNU C Library stable release version 2.3.6] [Linux 2.6.14.3 i686] 12:49:00 up 1:02, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.01, 0.00 -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/blfs-dev FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/faq.html Unsubscribe: See the above information page
Thanks to devs
I've been working with *nix since the early 80's and have been using linux since the early 90's. It's only been during the past 5 years or so that I have been using linux exclusively. I've always been curious as to what it takes to create a linux system from the sources and never really had the time to devote to figuring out all of the steps needed. I just wanted to give a quick thanks to the developers of LFS because not only did it answer all of my questions about how to do it, actual step by step instructions were included. I went through the LFS book manually the first time and even though the process was slow, the entire thing worked and, better yet, the end product worked. Next I decided to give jhalfs a try and lo and behold, other than a couple of weird problems that occurred as a result of oddities with the host system I chose, it too worked and the result was a working system. I've spent the last couple of days trying out the LiveCD/jhalfs method, and, like all of the other methods, it just worked. I now feel I have a very good understanding of the whole process of putting together a complete linux system from sources. I just wanted to thank the devs for all of the work they do and the quality of the work. I think one of the things that makes LFS so nice is inclusion of configuration files/info needed to make some of the software packages work. For the most part, getting the build configuration and actual build to work is fairly easy. It's actually getting the software configuration stuff to make the software work that's usually the PITA. Thanks for including that stuff, it sure is a time saver. Oh, BTW, the system I'm putting together is a basic HTTP server with firewalling, etc.. Just to give you an idea, the normal distro I use on that is Ubuntu. The time from pressing the power button to when I get a login prompt using Ubuntu is ~2:45, with LFS, that time drops to ~20 seconds on the exact same piece of hardware. Bravo guys. Keep up the good work. It's appreciated. I did install some of the stuff from BLFS that I needed (apache, iptables, etc.). The only thing I had to get my self and figure out how to configure and compile was NET-SNMP. That would probably be the only thing I might suggest adding to the BLFS stuff. Mike -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/lfs-dev FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/faq/ Unsubscribe: See the above information page
Re: Thanks to devs
Thanks for the feedback Mike. Reading these types of comments is always a pleasure. I hope you continue to learn from LFS and if you do learn something new, a note is always appreciated. -- Bruce -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/lfs-dev FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/faq/ Unsubscribe: See the above information page
Re: Thanks to devs
Mike Lynch wrote these words on 08/16/07 20:27 CST: I did install some of the stuff from BLFS that I needed (apache, iptables, etc.). The only thing I had to get my self and figure out how to configure and compile was NET-SNMP. That would probably be the only thing I might suggest adding to the BLFS stuff. About 2 years ago I proposed to put Net-SNMP in the book, but was told by the resident security expert on our staff that SNMP was insecure (because the SNMP protocol in itself was insecure) and not to be used. I won't mention a name. I disagreed then, and still to this day think the Net-SNMP is a good thing. Thanks for writing in. I too use it, as do thousands (perhaps millions by now) of other people. Some in mission-critical installations. It's probably time that BLFS put it in the book. However, configuration of such a package is a stiff thing. You must do a bunch to get results that are meaningful. I'm not sure there is anyone on staff that can do this. Mike, would you be willing to provide a default setup that we could use? I cc'd BLFS-Dev just to get exposure to the proposal. -- Randy rmlscsi: [bogomips 1003.27] [GNU ld version 2.16.1] [gcc (GCC) 4.0.3] [GNU C Library stable release version 2.3.6] [Linux 2.6.14.3 i686] 20:35:00 up 8:48, 1 user, load average: 0.06, 0.05, 0.01 -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/lfs-dev FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/faq/ Unsubscribe: See the above information page
Re: Thanks to devs
Randy McMurchy wrote: snip Thanks for writing in. I too use it, as do thousands (perhaps millions by now) of other people. Some in mission-critical installations. It's probably time that BLFS put it in the book. However, configuration of such a package is a stiff thing. You must do a bunch to get results that are meaningful. I'm not sure there is anyone on staff that can do this. Mike, would you be willing to provide a default setup that we could use? Pretty much everything I sell goes into high security or mission critical locations. Some won't consider units without SNMP, for others, it's just a selling point even if it's not used (firewall it if your really worried). I agree, configuring it for high security SNMPv3 with ACL's is not trivial. I could probably provide some configurations for SNMPv1 that, while they wouldn't be appropriate for high security installations, would at least make it work enough to be able to see that it does, in fact, work. Would that do or were you looking for more sophisticated configuration? -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/lfs-dev FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/faq/ Unsubscribe: See the above information page
Re: Thanks to devs
Mike Lynch wrote these words on 08/16/07 21:06 CST: I agree, configuring it for high security SNMPv3 with ACL's is not trivial. I could probably provide some configurations for SNMPv1 that, while they wouldn't be appropriate for high security installations, would at least make it work enough to be able to see that it does, in fact, work. Would that do or were you looking for more sophisticated configuration? I'm looking for anything that could be used by the average person wanting to use SNMP for what it was intended to be used for. I realize that the previous paragraph is vague, so anything you could provide that would *work*, I would test and put in the book if it provides the capability that SNMP should provide. We can work off-line if necessary, to work out the details. Also, we should probably keep the discussion at BLFS-Dev, as this is far beyond LFS. Mike, thanks for your interest, and I hope to see you write in some additional info to keep this subject alive. -- Randy rmlscsi: [bogomips 1003.27] [GNU ld version 2.16.1] [gcc (GCC) 4.0.3] [GNU C Library stable release version 2.3.6] [Linux 2.6.14.3 i686] 21:20:01 up 9:33, 1 user, load average: 0.10, 0.06, 0.01 -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/lfs-dev FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/faq/ Unsubscribe: See the above information page
Re: Thanks to devs
Pretty much everything I sell goes into high security or mission critical locations. Some won't consider units without SNMP, for others, it's just a selling point even if it's not used (firewall it if your really worried). I find myself ending up in many a datacenter. From what I've seen, SNMP isn't used nearly enough. The labs that take advantage of it have that extra piece of mind with the many benefits of it. From what I've seen, the way they use it is not intended to be secure. The latest use I have seen for it is to simply monitor switched power strips. I'm not sure if the security concern is some time of exploit, but even this would seem acceptable for an internal corporate LAN behind a good set of firewalls. Craig Jackson (TheEpitome) -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/lfs-dev FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/faq/ Unsubscribe: See the above information page
