[Gbootroot-devel] Necessary Devices -> Frame Buffer

[Jonathan R. <mtt...@ac...>]

Cristian,

I hope you have your changes submitted to CVS, but here's the problem I
found with your /dev/fb0 solution:

# it is possible other folks use some othe partition to boot
# we're more generous now :-)
    return if err(system "mkdir $mnt/{boot,dev} >> $verbosefn 2>&1; cp -a
/dev/{null,fd?,hda*,sda*,fb0*} $mnt/dev >> $verbosefn 2>&1") == 2;

Simplicity can be a nice thing.  Not all distributions include all these
devices by default.  This change didn't work on my system because there
isn't any /dev/fb0. I imagine there are some systems which don't have
hda* or sda* either.  I had:

return if err(system "mkdir $mnt/{boot,dev} >> $tmp/verbose 2>&1; cp -a
/dev/{null,fd?,hda1} $mnt/dev >> $tmp/verbose 2>&1") == 2;  

Come to think of it, I was presumptuous in assuming the existence of
/dev/hda1. :)

In your case /dev/fb0 is important for the kernel to function properly
with your video card, the boot issue is already taken care of by this
code:

    # Hopefully, this works, but have never tested it                     
    if ($device !~ m#/dev/fd\d{1}$#) {                                   
        return if err( system "cp -a $device $mnt/dev >> $verbosefn 2>&1")
== 2;
    } 

I'd be weired out if someone used gBootRoot on two /dev/sda1's at this
point.  But, anyways, a solution has to be provided for situations like
yours.

You mentioned:

> To make it work on my system, the way I want to, I had to add
> 
>  "video=matrox:vesa:402,depth:16 aic7xxx=verbose:0x39"
> 
> to the "append" option.

What I think needs to be done is to have gBootRoot bring up an interactive
text selection.  After a person makes the changes, gBootRoot will sense
the changes in the text and add the new devices as needed.  I think
advanced users will like this feature, otherwise gBootRoot will become an
installation program where the gBootRoot developers have to do all the
guessing about other people's systems.  gBootRoot should remain a tool. 

There may be better ways of doing this.  Tell me what you think?