Re: [gentoo-releng] x86-livecd - bugs and suggestions

["Brad House" <brad_mssw@gentoo.org>]

Commenting inline below.

>> Bugs:
>> - Calculation of module dependencies fails at bootup
>
> Anybody have a log?

reason for this is that /lib/modules/${KV} is off a read-only
filesystem.  It should not need to depmod that directory off
a livecd, as we won't have removed modules, etc.  An alternative
approach would be to mount /lib/modules/${KV} on a tmpfs,
make sure the sub directories are symlinks to the read-only
fs, and copy the files like  modules.pcimap to the tmpfs
so they are writable...

The first approach of just skipping the depmod if booting off
a livecd is the better approach.  Also, this failure really
doesn't mean anything or do anything harmful, which is one
reason I didn't fix it in my baselayout.

>
>> - selection of keymap not possible
>
> We could add an alternative keymap script, that do that, and only
> install with USE=livecd ... anybody got a template, etc to start
> off?

this I don't have a clue about, so i'm not commenting on.

>
>> - Inability to halt/reboot (system just stops when all processes are
>>   shut-down)
>
> Logs if possible?

The reason for this is quite simple.  The livecd was built with
the cdfs/loop type as 'normal' which creates a loopback filesystem.
The loopback filesystem gets unmounted '_before_' everything else
is remounted readonly.  But since the loopback is readonly as well,
it should never actually be being umounted before the reboot.  The
actual / filesystem is a tmpfs with symlinks back to the mounted
loopback in this scenerio, so when you umount the loopback, the /
filesystem has symlinks to nothing, hence the hang.

This is not an issue if you use cdfs/loop type of zisofs or noloop
as there is no loop device to be umounted.

>
>> - Hardware-detection not included
>>
>
> Sure will be nifty, but I guess catalyst should just install appropriate
> package and add to boot runlevel?  Do not see any special handling, or
> am I missing something?

I had not gotten a chance to put together the  livecd-tools package.
That script, as well as net-setup is in there.  Basically, it will just
be a package that needs to be a dep in the livecd-stage1 packages,
and a quick one-liner in the default-runscript.sh will get it all
up and running, really a simple thing.

>
>
> As for 2.6 - think we can start to use module-init-tools as default for
> ALL profiles, or is there ARCH issues I am not aware of?  Should just
> be needed to adjust the default virtual.

Right, as long as the current module-init-tools ebuild installs the
insmod.old for 2.4 kernels.  I believe at one time it did not.


Even though I've stepped away from livecd stuff, I need to fix this
stuff to build my amd64 2004.0 release anyhow.  I'd take care of this
since I'm more familiar with the problems if anyone wants me to. I can
do that this weekend.


-Brad House
brad_mssw@gentoo.org

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