Am Mit, 28 Jun 2000 17:51:52 BlowGlass Sie: > > Hi! > > i am new to the hurd, but the fact that there's no native install for the > hurd is something i really dislike, so my questions are : > > * is anybody working on a native install for the hurd
I did some work in the past. Here are the issues: 1. Extend libstore to pass on disk geometry parameters to the application and port fdisk to the Hurd. Without fdisk, no selfcontained installation. 2. Fetch the script from John and create boot disks. Those are able to boot a root filesystem of a second disk. 3. Fetch my script to create minimalized shared libraries from pic-libraries (I can provide the last version). 4. Try to create a bootable root filesystem that contains all needed Hurd servers, libraries and applications to get a minimal functional system that can run an installer. This file system must fit on a single floppy when compressed with gzip or bzip2. You can use the script mentioned in 3. to strip the libraries from unneeded symbols to make them smaller. Do that. 5. See if the boot disk in 2. really can boot the disk made in 4. Fix all remaining bugs that are in the way (there will be bugs). 6. You will see that everything barely fits on the disk, and you have no room for all the stuff we need for the installer that isn't on it yet. Go and port ash, so we can leave bash and ncurses from the bootdisk. 7. Only then we can even think about porting the Debian installation programs to the Hurd. If all this sounds too complicated, you can try only to solve parts of the problem. For example, port ash (and all packages you need to build it, for example pmake, IIRC, which has PATH_MAX issues). Or fdisk (a real showstopper. Several people looked at it so far, but nobody had the "guts" to mess with libstore). Assuming those two problems are solved, I might take a look at it myself again. Thanks, Marcus
