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Since the last status report, almost three months have passed, we have had a quite successful alpha release and much has changed. Debian-installer is still able to install Debian, so that hasn't changed. :) The goals set in the last status report before alpha: menu ordering, unbreaking of mkfs, fix mounting and adding a log-tool are mostly done. Still outstanding is the addition of a self-test/logging tool. Martin has done some good work on getting Release file support into anna and the retrievers, though the archive doesn't have working Release files for sarge (since the debian-installer part of sarge is just a symlink to sid, for the time being); optimally, what I'd like is getting anna to support gpg and verify the full integrity of the install. One would then only have to trust the integrity of the initial boot media; a compromised mirror would be detected immediately. cdebconf has gotten a slang frontend, which seems to work reasonably well, but looks ugly and has some strange hangs unaccounted for in addition to at least a non-implemented progress bar. Screenshots[1] courtesy of Martin. We've also gotten a progress bar into cdebconf, as well as an HTTP backend. Some work has been done on the gtk frontend, but nothing solid yet. Help here is appreciated. Santiago Garcia Mantinan has done some great work on getting daily built CD netinst and business card-sized images online. [2] The netinst images contain debian-installer and the base packages, the business card-sized ones just debian-installer. A lot of work has been going into infrastructure work, such as finding a method of installing extra packages into the base system. This is needed for EVMS, grub and some other packages in addition to the kernel-installer. This means kernel-images will be installed from normal Debian packages, unlike in boot-floppies where they were just copied off the floppy/CD, something which has caused confusion in the past. We now have some new udebs as well, such as keyboard selection and language chooser and autopartitioner. Good work, those of you working on those. So, now it's time for the big and ugly TODO list. :) - - Porting. As usual, some ports are in a better shape than others, and some are in serious trouble even before they are begun. m68k and sparc32 are in the latter category, since they have problems with 2.4, which is needed due to devfs. - - de-uglification of the slang frontend and progress bar addition to cdebconf. - - gtkfb/graphical install. Work has been done, but this need to get more solid and onto the CDs. - - testing. More testing, more bug reports. If somebody who knows a bit about usability could begin looking and guiding us, it would be good. Also, having somebody with a good touch for English to go through the templates would be nice. - - automated installs and testing. If somebody could give automated installations and how to get those working better a shot, it'd be cool. Getting the report tool (which should fill out the report template available at http://raw.no/d-i/report-template.html) written would make it easier for testers to give us good reports. - - fix the ext3 problem; mkfs.ext3 gives an error about «file not found» (which is really that it can't find /etc/mtab). mkswap should also be added. - - base-config <-> d-i integration. The debconf db should be seeded with the values from debian-installer. Exactly how to do this is not clear yet. We are moving into a more polish/integration phase; most of the major building blocks are in place, but many are missing critical features. This means that non-x86 arches should get moving with regards to getting debian-installer at least roughly working, if they need changes to central parts of debian-installer. As always, feedback, flames, comments and ideas are appreciated. [1] http://people.debian.org/~sjogren/d-i/screenshots/2003-02-16/slang/ [2] http://lists.debian.org/debian-cd/2003/debian-cd-200301/msg00121.html - -- Tollef Fog Heen ,''`. UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are : :' : `. `' `- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Please see my GPG key at http://raw.no/gpgkey.asc iD8DBQE+VkWwQSseMYF6mWoRAvdRAJ9wHWv9+Yl0TbTXeSP1+mgxwVZGuwCgxrbl IP1TsRhZu/yUwOhA6BBhHZk= =IjeO -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
