KGMD 2.0

[johnnie ligotage <johnnie@ligotage.demon.co.uk>]

Hi all!

(Thanks to Eero et al for pointing out the FHS documentation. I lost my
hard-disk many times the last time this topic was discussed and hence all 
my mails...)

I'm going to start converting KGMD 1.0 to 2.0 very soon. Well, I have
started tonite, but only as far as reading the docs on FHS, identifying
the binaries and listing them.

IF ANYONE ELSE IS DOING THIS, PLEASE MAIL ME, AS I _HATE_ DUPLICATING WORK
AND MAYBE WE CAN HELP EACH OTHER...

(sorry for shouting)

I am assuming that EVERYONE will want networking capability, be it for
internet access or another computer via a serial port. Not to unreasonable
I think...

What I plan to do is this:

	0) Provide an "upgrade script" that will back-up a current users
	configuration to floppy (eg) for use in installing KGMD 2.0 -
	basically files in /etc, /usr/local/lib (for pine, lynx, etc),
	/var/spool/mail/*, and anywhere else _WE_ identify. OBVIOUSLY, it
	will be up to the user to back up their own personal stuff (you
	don't already...??!!!)

	1) FHS documentation states that the various filesystem
	(partition) components be kept to a reasonable size. Ideally,
	this means, as part of this new distribution, the opening
	(instruction) documentation should instruct the user to create
	various partitions on a hard disk. Many users will not want to do
	this (I expect), so an alternate method will be provided. But many
	will, so suitable partition sizes will need to be determined, eg
	(completely random figures - plucked from the air about me) 5Mb
	for the root filesystem, 20Mb for /home, etc, etc...

	2) root.tgz - this will be the bare bones for booting ONLY: /bin,
	/sbin, /etc, /root will contain binaries and configuration files
	as layed out by the FHS documentation.

	Q a. Should inetd and friends reside in /sbin?

	Q b. Should there be provision for an alternate hostname during
	single user boot?

	Q c. Where do we want root's home to be, /, /root or /home/root? I
	would suggest, for simplicity, /root.

	3) basic.tgz - this will contain the stuff below /usr and /var.

	4) compiler.tgz - gcc 2.7.2 at a minimum, unless anyone objects

	5) x11r?.tgz

	6) and then all the above, but as source.

	7) I hope to maintain a port of Csound for the Atari and there are
	others out there who maintain other applications, or who port
	them. We should provide scripts to install them under the /opt
	structure.

	8) (Probably more important than I've numbered it) Multilingual
	support. I believe the man pages/documentation could be done as
	deutsch.tgz, english.tgz, francais.tgz, italiano.tgz, etc...
	
	Q d. Can we provide support for more than one installed language
	support? It's easy to install the various languages, separately,
	but can we easily tell 'man', etc, which to display?

Salut/.

J/.
__
John Blakeley
http://www.ligotage.demon.co.uk