Re: woody root.bin

[Boris DAIX <Boris.Daix@insa-lyon.fr>]

Cheryl Homiak <chomiak@chartermi.net> writes:

> Hey, just now reading this thread and haven't tried it, but looks like an
> excellent idea to me if it works.

And... Yes, it does work !!!

There are errors in kernel modules loading but I don't think it is
because of the modification. So I will go on again tomorrow (here is
time to sleep) to see why I get those errors, I may try with
completely standard floppies to compare error messages, with someone
helping. But I could read the welcome message (curses based), and so on.

> i had tried modifying the woody root.bin by unzipping and mounting it and adding
> the necessary files, including a statically linked brltty executable. However,
> the resulting root.bin was too large, even though I had had success doing it
> with potato's root.bin. Using the procedure of the brltty disk, if this works,
> would stop all the bother each time a new root.bin comes out of trying to modify
> it and hoping everything will fit or trying to decide what to remove. As it will
> allways be possible to make the simple modification to root.bin described
> without significantly increasing the size, this could be a long-term solution
> instead of just a fix for doing it with woody.
> Thanks.
> A couple of comments on things people have written.
> I know this has already been said, but i saw another question on it,
> so--remember that you have to mv root.bin to root.gz and use gunzip to unzip it;
> then you will find that you can mount it.
> Secondly, it isn't necessary to actually install a statically linked brltty on
> your system. You would just compile so it is statically linked and then transfer
> the brltty executable and whatever other files you need/want. In this case, of
> course you wouldn't use the install-brltty script because it will install your
> /sbin/brltty (no doubt dynamically linked) instead of the brltty executable you
> have created. This way you aren't changing the setup on your system in any way,
> just creating what you need either to put on the root.bin or put in the brltty
> disk.
>
>
> as for woody, it is my impression from the debian lists that lots of
> people are installing it directly rather than upgrading to it. I believe
> it is mainly some security-related issues that have delayed woody's
> release, but it shouldn't be a problem to install it.
> As for SID, personally I would hold off a bit. I am now running SID
> because I thought SID would become the testing version when woody was
> released and woody was frozen so I wanted to continue upgrading. However,
> apparently it isn't that straightforward. If I understood the discussion
> of this on debian lists correctly, not all of the present unstable will
> become testing/SID; some packages will remain in unstable while others
> will form the new testing. so I'd advise you to wait until woody releases
> and the smoke clears before trying a raw install either to the new testing
> or unstable, but hey, if you don't mind some risk and your backups are
> good enough to get you out of trouble, go for it!

I think so. The last thing to check would be to see how
"debian-installer" would replace all those accessibility troubles
during install, 'cause I've been told on debian-boot that hacking
floppies won't help anymore when this brand-new installer would be
born. Let's wait...

Another thing to take care would be to post-process a script that
would enable, from hard drive, the brltty execution. Because when you
finished configuring base-system (if I remember), you have to reboot
to install all remaining stuff, and you have to make a lilo/boot
floppy to completely restart the computer. So here is the last thing
to fix. But like we have a complete floppy to put our things in, we
should find a place to write an "install script"... May be the
install-brltty would match (I never used it, using make install
instead) ?

>
> Cheryl
>
>

All I can say for now is "good night", tomorrow would be easier for me
- so thank you Mario !!

Boris