water cooler :: Would it be time for DSL to shed its skin?



Quote (curaga @ July 20 2007,21:07)
when can I have your root image to play with? X etc..

ASAP, but I have only too many assignments these few days.
Where could I upload it when it's done? (Gmail is not possible because the file is too large.)
What? Gmail has 2Gb space, doesn't it?
how about making it iso9660/bzipped ext2/cramfs? (whichever is smallest and fits for the purposes, cramfs cannot be used if the size is over 256mb uncompressed etc..)
I can handle zisofs too, and if gmail has a file size limit, just "split" it

Anyone can upload files <100mb to rapidshare, btw..


I think a base done with LFS style would be better, with chance to optimize and mess with everything, but since my three tries so far have failed, let's mess with this buildroot one..
On top of the buildroot base, I am manually compiling freetype, fontconfig, libid3tag, and libmad. I am not touching Xorg, so glib-1.2 and gtk-1.2 will have to come later.

I will send this modified buildroot image (it is ext2) by Gmail, split into 20M pieces (I will use `lxsplit` - is this okay?).

Thanks for your patience. :)

Notes:
1. Busybox `ar` lacks [some?] switches that are present in the GNU version. As a result libiconv could not compile - Busybox `ar` gave an "unknown switch" error. It seems buildroot leaves GNU `ar` out of the image in favour of busybox's `ar`. I did:
`rm mountpoint/usr/bin/ar` (This is a symlink - Remove first, or you will overwrite '/bin/busybox'! No - `cp -r` doesn't work.)
`cp buildroot/build_i386/binutils-2.17-target/binutils/ar mountpoint/usr/bin`
This solved the problem.
It is possible there are more Busybox commands that need to be replaced with the GNU versions.
Update: Busybox `tar` sometimes complains about "Invalid magic" while GNU `tar` works. So I've replaced '/bin/tar' with GNU `tar`.
2. After I compiled the nano editor, it wouldn't run in the chroot environment - "Error opening terminal - rxvt."
Seems like the default ncurses installation doesn't have the rxvt terminfo entries.
So I copied over the terminfo entries for anything rxvt-related from my Debian root:
`mkdir mountpoint/usr/share/terminfo/r`
`cp /usr/share/terminfo/r/rxvt* mountpoint/usr/share/terminfo/r`
`nano` works properly after this.
3. From my own bad experience - If you chroot into the uClibc image, and then close the xterm window without properly using `exit`, further instances of `bash` will become progressively laggier. To make things right again, do `lsof mountpoint` and `kill -9` the bash instance(s).
4. I have a bunch of 'alias bla=blabla' and 'export CXXFLAGS=blabla' and 'export CPPFLAGS=blabla' lines in '/etc/profile' which I use. Please modify or remove them at your convenience.

Update:
I just ran into a problem building GNU tar. It has to do with missing wide char functions in uClibc. I will have to rebuild uClibc with wide char support.
The buildroot documentation describes how to reconfigure uClibc here.
How big is it?

I think it would be best if you split (using gnu split, so I could combine more easily) to 100mb which would go to Rapidshare and the rest to your Gmail, as Rapidshare has amazing bandwith..

Also please at least gzip it before splitting.. oh and don't email anything to me, my mailbox is 3mb and already half full!


For your errors/stuff, all that would've been avoided if the base was LFS... Not that it matters..
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