From: msb@cats.ucsc.edu (Maurice S. Barnum) Subject: request for suggestions and comments Date: 1 Apr 1993 00:16:57 GMT
I am writing/have written an installation script for .t?z files on
floppies. I know about SLS and sysinstall, but wrote this one
because I wanted something somewhat more flexible and general. I
don't currently have SLS installed on any machine, and in fact,
won't have access to a linux machine until my roommate comes back
next week, hence a few questions:
o in order to remove a package, without having the original
around, I need to store the file list somewhere. But this
requires two passes over the floppy, once to do a "tar tf"
another to do that actual extraction. Is this too much to
ask? I'm split on whether it should be done by default, or
not.
o are there any plans to have any useful information in the
disk* files on the SLS distribution?
o Is anyone else interested in a different package install
script?
Basically, the way things work is that "pkg_install" with no
arguments will mount a floppy, do a "zcat | tar xf -" from
/mnt/*.t?z file, then umount it. There are also options to
specify fs_type, mount directory, top level for installation
(default "/"), to clobber or not to clobber, to install or list,
to prompt per package or not, which floppy?, etc. I've also
written a companion "pkg_remove" that will be useful when the file
names are stored somewhere.
It isn't a complicated script, by any means, but it does make
things easier, and doesn't require the directory structure that
sysinstall seems to expect.
oh, and there are man pages, which will be simply beautiful once I
figure out some of the black magic behind some of the things I
snarfed from SunOs's ls(1) page.
So finally: is anyone interested? And, if you've got
suggestions, know of something that you are just dying to have in
a install script, email me.
thanks.
(and no one get me wrong.... SLS is great. Thanks Peter!)
-- Maurice S. Barnum msb@cats.ucsc.edu | There is no confusion like msb@cats.BITNET | the confusion of a simple mind. mbarnum@eis.calstate.edu | --- F. Scott Fitzgerald