Re: Synopsis

[JF Martinez <jfm2@club-internet.fr>]

> 
> Hi,
> I can help.
> But first I will do a report of some investigations I did to help
r> installation, especially the dos/win part.
> Well first, I tried to find something free on windows to make
> partitionning easier. In fact I found that a good tool for that was
> parted which is a GNU programm running under linux. So I began to test it.
> I had much trouble
> while playing with my win/dos partitions, but after testing and
> discussing, it doesn't seems that it is parted's fault, but win bugs.
> 
> What do people (JF) think about using parted for partitionning dos/win
> patitions at install time, or is there a better solution allready
> implemented ?
> 

Partitionning is not difficult in RedHat/indy but carving a hole for
Linux is since FIPS cannot be named user friendly.

Does parted allow the growing/shrinking of Linux or Windows partitions?


> Other thing, I found a very interesting utility for windows, and what's
> more an open source and free programm (although I think the compiler it
> use isn't free, as it is in delphi, but still it is really rare, trust
> me!), that does all installation for you, in the true windows tradition,
> with install shield, registry modifications  and so on, seems very
> powerfull. It is based on a config file that is parsed. So I think I could
> use it to generate something nice for windows users, with an automatized
> installation of loadlin, for example. Does it seems to be interresting ?
> 

Yes, very interesting.

> Last thing, I can recompile kernels, I allready tried to do a kernel
> which could turn on the most different computers, modularised for anything
> possible. I had problems for strange hardware, but I should dig and ask in
> relevant places, if needed.
> 

Do you have a fast box?  I have found that recompiling a kernel when
you really compile everything (be it in modules or in the main body)
takes over an hour on a PII 400.  And then you need to rebuild for
Pentiums, and still a third time for PentiumPros.  In 2.2 a single
universal kernel means too much performance loss.

My personal method is go to the RedHAt ftp site, download the SRPM
they did from the last kernel, do an rpm -U of it then go to where the
sources got installed (/usr/src/redhat/SOURCES) and edit the files
describing what has to be compiled and how.  Then "rpm -ba" They have
Alan Cox in their team so I don't thinbk we can improve much on them.
But we can add features they considered unimportant like NTFS support
(it is presently read only)

> Well, last thing, but only to think about, I am aware of some systems that
> only install the very basic system, so perhaps it could be useful to use
> this as tool to save some work. But I think it is not a priority at all. 
> 
> Pat
> 
> JF, si tu veux me repondre en francais personnelement, hesite pas, en
> plus pour moi, c plus facile.
> 


Dans les prochaines.

-- 
			Jean Francois Martinez

Project Independence: Linux for the Masses
http://www.independence.seul.org