I came at this roundabout: I was looking for some background on using debootstrap (1), and that led me, eventually, to the install guide at
http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/ch-preparing.en.html#s-linux-upgrade On the whole, this was very useful, and I want to thank all of those who have contributed to this over the years. But one bit is at least misleading as it stands. The problem is in 3.7.5.1, where an example of a multi-partition setup is shown. Earlier, there was explicit instruction to mount *one* partition for installation, and here it blithely tells you to go ahead and mount the (presumably still empty) partitions on the chroot's /var, /usr, ... Having done various sorts of not-from-scratch installations, I had already mounted all the filesystems before turning debootstrap loose, but even so you had me scratching my head for a moment, wondering if I had somehow missed a whole subsection previously or if there was some magic about remounting the filesystems inside the chroot. (there didn't seem to be any of the latter: an attempt just produced an error message about the already-mounted filesystem.) It's arguable that anyone who is installing to a multi-filesystem setup should already know enough to sort this out, but in that case it seems odd to confuse folks with this elaborate setup in 3.7.5.1 - not all of which can be omitted, of course. I guess it depends on which audience(s) you want to support directly. (1) I was messing about with debootstrap because most of the 3.0 installation kernels hung or crashed on the old PPro box I've been working on. I eventually found that the "vanilla" (2.2.x) kernel worked, so I was able to get where I wanted to be (running a locally built 2.4.x kernel) on the small, maintenance partition, but it left me without an easy way to install the main server system on ext3 partitions... until I was reminded of debootstrap. -- Show me your flowcharts and conceal your tables, and I shall continue to be mystified. Show me your tables, and I won't usually need your flowcharts; they'll be obvious. -- Brooks -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
