Turnbull China Bikeride/Turnbull China Bikeride - Disc 2.iso/BARNET/ARMLINUX/MAIL/9804/000080_owner-linux-arm…r.rutgers.edu _Mon Apr 20 10:45:42 1998.msg

Internet Message Format | 1998-05-13 | 6KB

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Date:     Mon, 20 Apr 1998 10:44:00 +0100 (BST)
From: James Craig <[e-mail]>
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To: Russell King - ARM Linux Admin <[e-mail]>
cc: James Craig <[e-mail]>, [e-mail],
        [e-mail]
Subject: Re: Installing on an 4 MB A5000
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--
James Craig <[e-mail]>
            <[e-mail]>


On Sat, 18 Apr 1998, Russell King - ARM Linux Admin wrote:

> James Craig writes:
> > Here's a serious thought.
> > The Slackware installer works in 4M on the ix86 architecture - anyone feel
> > like recompiling Slack for the ARM? It should just be a case of setting up
> > the cross-compiler as the default compiler, and then doing a SlackBuild
> > command in the root of the slack source tree.
> > The other thing is that you can install slackware packages without using
> > the installer, if you really need, since they are just .tar.gz's with a
> > few extra files included. Much nicer than that horrible RPM thingy. :)
>
> Here's a few facts:
> *    The RedHat installer works in 4MB on the x86 architecture.
> *    The RedHat installer works in 4MB on the RiscPC architecture.
> *    The RedHat installer does not work in 4MB on the A5000 architecture.
It's well dodgy on 4M on an x86. I've tried it. :)
> The reason?  The old machines have a limited number of pages (128 if you've
> got 4MB) and with a 32k page size.  This all adds up to not a lot of pages
> per process after the kernel has built, and hence the problems.  In 4MB without
> swap, you can just about get away with a shell and a daemon before you
> hit the out of memory.  There just aren't enough pages at a fine enough
> granularity.
Yep, I know about this problem. It's a bit of a problem (understatement of
the century) but we're more likely to be able to manage when the installer
is just a tar+gunzip, instead of some weird format that stores huge heaps
of completely useless info.
> No matter what installer you use, you're going to get this problem. >
> Besides, RPMs are much nicer...  The binary ones contain all info to do
> with the package, including install and uninstall scripts.  They also
> contain a description of the package, and a signature (mine don't) to
> verify that the packages are still sound.
The slackware packages include the scripts too - If you look closely at a
slackware package, it contains a install/script file usually which handles
installation. Most slackware packages uninstall fairly cleanly too. The
other *BIG*, in fact *HUGE* advantage is that you can get away with no
installer whatsoever. The good old fashioned sash shell (stand-alone
shell) includes tar in it - and compiles perfectly for the ARM leaving
bucketloads of RAM free even on a 4M machine. You can just use it's
built-in tar command to unpack the slackware packages - it works great.
> The source RPMs contain all the info to rebuild the binary RPM.  In fact,
> you cannot have a source RPM without having a binary RPM.
Woopee. Hmm... methinks slackware source dir and the magic SlackBuild
files. :)
> The RPMs have version and release numbers in, and they have
> interdependencies, such that the installer can say to itself: 'so you want
> to install this perl script do you?  have you installed perl already ?'
> If you haven't, it'll warn you.  It'll also warn you if you attempt to
> remove a package (eg perl) that has other packages using it.
Interdependencies are much overrated. Installing RH and debian, I spend
half my time overriding the bloody things because stupid people saw fit to
make, e.g. tcl-7.4 and tcl-7.5, completely seperate from a dependencies
point of view. Right now, ARM linux is a real pain in the butt to get
working on older machines. I don't really think people who are smart
enough to get it to even *boot* are going to have much trouble figuring
out that the need to install perl before they can use a perl script. Not
to forget, of course, RPM is truly hideous to use anyway. Trying to do
anything other than one of the predefined action is seriously fiddly, and
you don't stand much change of getting an RPM port to other OSs to let
you modify packages before installing them - e.g. seperating individual
files out to fit them onto 720K floppies.. Also - removing a package which
other programs are using isn't smart usually - but you need to do it to
make a decent job of upgrading versions on something. I'd much rather it
just shut up and got on with it. :)
> I've had this discussion with someone at work, and they saw the light... ;)
My commiserations to your friend, losing his soul to the dark side of
Linux. He's fallen in with evil companions. ;)

-- James Craig
   <[e-mail]>

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