Re: SEUL: Migration, and a brief recap

[Paul Anderson <paul@geeky1.ebtech.net>]

On Thu, 8 Jan 1998, William T Wilson wrote:

> 
> Unfortunately, before we can shuffle everything around, we need to get a
> real structure in place.  We need to have:
> 
Everyone might have noticed I've been staying out of the fray lately,
comes from trying to figure out redhat's installer:)

> 1) Commitments from interested parties as to exactly what they want to
> work on, what experience they have in the area, what relevant skills they
> have (programming languages?), how much time they plan to spend, and what
> their priorities are.  Then people need to be assigned to appropriate
> projects.  Otherwise, we'll have the same results as now (everyone
> talking, no one doing, no one really knowing what they are supposed to
> do).
> 
I'm doing right at the moment, and making progress as to figuring out how
the installer works.  Soon, I'll be onto figuring out the second-stage
installer.(BTW, I got a message back from the guy in charge of LINNET,
will forward ASAP.)

> We have to let those of us who are interested join the specific lists,
> BTW.  :)  I tried to sign up for some but got rejected.
> 
seul-dev-*-request@seul.org is really an alias for
majordomo@belegost.mit.edu, so say you want to subscribe to
seul-dev-distrib, the body to seul-dev-distrib-request@seul.org must read:

subscribe seul-dev-distrib

> I believe that the lists should be for specifics.  Like, do we use ncurses
> 4.1 or ncurses 2 like redhat.  I couldn't compile Sendmail 8.9.3, does
> anyone know how?  Things like that.  Not until then should we split
> everything up.
> 
SEUL version 0.0.1-pre will only have a couple packages, bare-bones.  What
version of sendmail or ncurses to use really isn't an issue right now.

> Then we build
> an installer.  These things have to more or less proceed in this order
> (some can be concurrent, for example, apps doesn't have to wait for PnP
> but it does have to wait for the shell) otherwise things will end up
> getting redone.
> 
Everything waits for the installer.  It's not a distribution without the
installer, most discussion is moot until we have a good working installer.
Someone here care to work out a config for XF86 that'll work on
everything?

> 
> 3) We'll need to decide on some system requirements.  :)  I think that
> 500MB disk and 8MB RAM is a reasonable target.  Nobody has 4MB anymore and
> 500MB is about as tight as you can fit a distribution in, I think, and
> have it do something useful.  Maybe we should look for 1GB disk space?
> 
You can do useful stuff with an 80Meg disk, but it's tight.  1Gig disks
are too small to be bought these days, 4Gig HDs are the norm for new
computers.  Not everyone has a new computer, AAMOF.

> I think it would be fun to
> have a working httpd server and useful to have a working SAMBA server, but
> stuff like mars_nwe and BIND I would consider completely extraneous.
>
MOST servers will be included in SEUL/Server.  Security will be more of a
concern with the server, the server package will also have an irc server,
gopher, etc.
 
> 
> We still don't know for sure whether we'll have an up-from-scratch
> distribution, a Redhat-based but not redhat-linked distribution, or a
> distribution that tries to mirror redhat.
> 
It will be somewhat redhat based.  We'll primarily be hacking up RH's
installer, and that'll be it for the most part.

> 
> 3) The distribution has to be very easy to install.  
> 
An unattended install would also be a good idea to implement - for
computer stores, should they ever wish to install SEUL on machines to be
sold:)

> 3.2) It must be able to install graphically.  Like Windows, which installs
> the most minimal of graphical shells before proceeding with the full scale
> system, our X setup doesn't have to be fancy. 
> 
Before it boots of the disk, the install will be text only.

> (Why doesn't the install ever look at the dmesg
> log to see what the kernel says on the subject?)  Is this vaunted
> autodection any use?  :) 
> 
Well, just so as happens that when the kernel boots it doesn't say a word
about mice.

> 3.4) It would be nice to work off a single floppy.  Since we shouldn't
> have to stuff into 4MB of RAM, then we can use ramdisks liberally.  Let's
> not worry about it too much though- I don't think even the most clueless
> newbie will have a problem switching disks.  :) 
> 
Install will be single-disk, because RH's install is single disk.

> 
> 3.7) The distribution has to be 'internet-ready' out of the box.  At least
> as much so as Win95... 
> 
The earlier versions of Win95(yes, there have been multiple versions)
didn't natively even support PPP!  TTYL!


                            ---
                        Paul Anderson
		   paul @ geeky1.ebtech.net
    Author of Star Spek(a tongue in cheek pun on Star trek)
e-mail: starspek-request@lowdown.com with subscribe as the subject
I hear it's hilarious.               Maintainer of the Tips-HOWTO.
          http://www.netcom.com/~tonyh3/speck.html
       DOS never says "EXCELLENT command or filename"...