[WBEL-devel] Heads up on RHEL Update2 Beta

[John Morris]

On Tue, 13 Apr 2004, Milan [iso-8859-2] Ker¹lįger wrote:

> You don't need extra partitions. All is able to live in chroot
> environment without need to reinstall base system. With yum this is easy
> to check if all updates/packages are in place (see list option).

Hmm.  I had heard that RH did it with a chroot.  I have had problems with
grub in a chroot (rescue) before though and figured it was more thing that
could go wrong.  Guess it is worth trying, then all I'd need is a spare
spot to do test installs.

> If your build system is AMD64, you are able to build full clean i386
> system in i386-only chroot tree and vice versa (AMD64 build needs clean
> x86_64 tree with no i386 stuff).

Haven't started researching what I'll need to do to get AMD64 builds.  So
you are saying that if you install the 32bit compatibility layer so you
can build i386 packages you can no longer build native packages?  Oh boy,
life on the bleeding edge!  Guess if I use a chroot environment to build
in it won't be that bad, but I pity the normal developer trying to support
both.

Guess I had better start reading though, the tax man screwed up this year
and instead of my usual reaming I'm actually going to get a refund. I
should dedicate the AMD port "This port made possible by the Bush tax
cut." just to watch the fireworks that would ensue.  ;)  (You being in .cz 
you probably don't follow US politics.  Basically, President Bush is a 
Republican and most of the US IT industry is Democrats and in this 
election year the rivalry has degenerated into outright hatred among the 
Democrats for Bush and all his works.)

> Compilation does not depend on current (running) kernel.

True, so long as it is possible to build i[356]86 packages with the AMD64
kernel and it sounds like that part works.  I was planning to be paranoid
with the seperate partitions, but if the chroot does work I'd be able to
build stuff without a reboot and that is always good.

> There is no need to make 3.1 when Red Hat itself has none and 3.0 +
> updates is 3.1 then. Just respin ISOs like RH does (ok, as RH will do
> after final U2).

I think this is the way to go, because after pondering it some more I have 
hit a problem with the original scheme.  If I create a 3.1 tree I'd have 
to keep it up pretty much forever because I have already noticed up2date 
go back for packages from the base set to install errata.  So I'm now 
figuring on keeping up2date pointing at the 3.0 tree.  Any packages which 
differ in the respin should be in the errata directory anyway so 
everything should be good.  So all that will be in the 3.1 tree will be 
.iso images.

> Just leave updates in same place and remove old ISOs. 

Does the GPL require making source images available for a length of time?  
Being non-commercial, my reading says no since anyone downloading the 
binaries had an opportunity to download the correspending source.

Ok, questions for those who know more about this stuff than I do.  Way I 
see it there are three ways to get a chroot environment.

1.  Install a system, then copy the whole live tree over.

2.  Try to use rpm --initdb --root [path to chroot] then install enough
packages with rpm --root [path to chroot] to get self hosted.

3.  Copy the running system's tree.  Sounds like a bad idea.

Opinions as to which is safer, etc. welcome.

-- 
John M.      http://www.beau.org/~jmorris        This post is 100% M$ Free!
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