Bug 371

Well, then your kernel would not be added to bootloader (and initrd not created)

Why would you want that ?

Is drakxtools-backend necessary to execute mkinitrd?

since this is a chrooted install, grub hasn't been set up with draktools, so it doesn't recognize the format anyway.

thing is, when installing a kernel, it pulls an enormous amount of packages, including drakxtools-backend en drakxtools-net and more

it just seems a bit excessive...

/sbin/installkernel (in bootloader-utils) calls bootloader-config (in drakxtools-backend) which creates initrd and setups bootloader

drakxtools-backend is not supposed to bring that many stuff:

$ rpm -q --requires drakxtools-backend
dmidecode  
perl-File-FnMatch  
perl-String-ShellQuote  
perl-MDK-Common >= 1.2.13
/bin/sh  
/bin/sh  
rpmlib(PayloadFilesHavePrefix) <= 4.0-1
rpmlib(CompressedFileNames) <= 3.0.4-1
perl-base  
libc.so.6  
libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.0)  
libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.1)  
libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.1.3)  
libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.3)
libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.3.4)
libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.4)  
libldetect.so.0.11  
libparted.so.0  
rtld(GNU_HASH)  
perl(Config)  
perl(Data::Dumper)  
perl(DynaLoader)  
perl(Exporter)  
perl(Getopt::Long)  
perl(MDK::Common)  
perl(MDK::Common::Func)  
perl(POSIX)  
perl(String::ShellQuote)  
perl(Xconfig::resolution_and_depth)  
rpmlib(PayloadIsLzma) <= 4.4.6-1

i'm going to investigate this some more

what i'm trying to do is work with NFS boot, as small as possible...

after base-system-minimal, i wanted to get a kernel and an initrd to pass directly for the PXE boot.


1. creating chroot

mkdir -p /chroot/1 ; urpmi.addmedia --urpmi-root /chroot/1 --distrib http://127.0.0.1/mageia/distrib/1/x86_64 ; urpmi --auto --no-suggests --urpmi-root /chroot/1/ basesystem-minimal locales-en

2. urpmi --no-suggests --urpmi-root /chroot/1/ drakxtools-backend

apparently it comes down to 77MB of extra space in 56 packages.

i can understand it's a bit in the core of things, but if bootloader-utils only requires bootloader-config and bootloader-config doesn't require anything from drakxtools-backend (it didn't seem to at first glance), why don't I split it off in it's own package? so that i can suggest it instead of require it? it would seem to save a lot on the minimal disk size.

looking at it logically, it seems adverse to actually need drakxtools when you just want a kernel or even bootloaders-utils.

bootloader-utils used to be standalone, but then the kernel installer code got merged/shared with the rest of the installer code to simplify the maintenance.

Feel free to suggest a patch on how to split this up without breaking the installer.

CC: (none) => tmb

well, bootloader-config doesn't seem to use anything else from drakxtools-backend, afaics; but there could always be some less obvious uses, that i can't see.

my idea is to split off bootloader-config into drakxtools-bootloader, and put a requiremement from drakxtools-backend to drakxtools-bootloader and a requires from bootloader-utils to drakxtools-bootloader instead of drakxtools-backend. then a suggests from drakxtools-bootloader to drakxtools-backend (if wanted).

the problem is, that i _think_ it's ok like this. but i didn't write the code, so i'm not 100% sure about it.

i'll gladly split it up like this, if only someone who knows this code can doublecheck.

We bloat the minimal system this way:
kernel > bootloader-utils > drakxtools-backend > drakx-kbd-mouse-x11 > drakxtools-curses > urpmi


We could indeed split off drakxtools-bootloader that would be required by both drakxtools-backend & bootloader-utils
We could also split libdrakx-kbd-mouse-x11 like we do for libdrakxnet in order to further break the require loop
=> harddrake{,-ui} would require drakx-kbd-mouse-x11

Assignee: bugsquad => thierry.vignaud
Summary: installing kernel pulls in drakxtools-backend (via bootloader-utils) => split out drakxtools-bootloader else installing kernel pulls in XFdrake/urpmi

Hum, spliting drakxtools-bootloader would split too many things since bootloader.pm depends on too many things.

I think I'll split libdrakx-kbd-mouse-x11 instead
That would still save us drakxtools-curses, urpmi, monitor-edid, usermode-consoleonly
drakconf & harddrake will still require the full drakx-kbd-mouse-x11

i would split off only bootloader-config, afaict not much depends on this? is this a good idea?

As Thierry said bootloader-config uses bootloader.pm, which is also used by many things.
So you would need to have one package for bootloader.pm, required both by bootloader-config and other stuff.

As I said, bootloader.pm depends on nearly all core modules of drakxtools-backend, so spliting cannot be done

ah, i missed the part of bootloader-config depending on bootloader.pm

perhaps the part of bootloader-config being used by kernel, isn't delving too deep into bootloader.pm and it can be somehow split up a bit?

i'm guessing that's more than a little split effort-wise...?

Just fixed in drakx-kbd-mouse-x11-0.97-4.mga2

Status: NEW => RESOLVED
Resolution: (none) => FIXED