[Gbootroot-devel] Re: Necessary Devices -> Frame Buffer

[Cristian Ionescu-I. <ci...@ax...>]

On Tue, 22 Aug 2000, Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote:

> Cristian,
> 
> I hope you have your changes submitted to CVS,

No, I didn't. I agreed it's better to do easy traceble changes, so I'll
have to cool down and reorganize myself a bit.

>                                                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.

True. Let's put them devices in a list and test and (maybe) create them 
one by one.

> 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?

"Another way of doing it" might be to show a new editable field with a
default value for the append parameter.