[arch-releng] ArchLinux install

[Dieter Plaetinck]

On Thu, 6 May 2010 10:01:22 +0800
Daniel Lin <dlin.tw at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi, Dieter,
> 
> I found you modified aif recently.  I'm not sure are you the proper
> person to answer these question.
> 
> Could I ask some issues which occurs when I install the ArchLinux?
> 
> The short description here
> -------------------------------------
> 1. The install iso lacks support boot from FAT32 partition.
> 2. There is a mkfs.btr,  but the install script haven't support the
> btr mount partition type
> 3. could the boot directoy's name changed to boot.arch.i686/ and put
> all squeshfs files in that directory?  That's let my usb stick could
> boot multiple bootable cdrom easier.(I wish put x86_64 & x86 boot
> image in one usb stick).
> 4. Is it possible to reduce to boot media's size to smaller such as
> 10 or 30 Mbytes?  I've seen debian/slax's net boot image is much
> smaller then ArchLinux's current image size.
> 
> The long description here
> ------------------------------------
> I use GRUB4DOS as my boot loader. (I'm also grub4dos's maintainer in
> Arch Linux).
> I extract 2009.08 net-install iso files into a FAT32 partition of USB
> stick. And chain the menu by GRUB's configfile option.
> 
> It failed when I just change the menu.lst's boot entry, it seems
> treat the VFAT as ext2/ext3 partition.
>    kernel ... archisolabel=MY_VFAT32_LABEL
> So, I manual type commands on ramfs prompt to let it bootable.
>    ln -sf /dev/sdb1 /dev/archiso
>   mount -t vfat /dev/archiso /bootmnt
>   exit
> If we try to enhance this boot media, that's will let novice user
> easier to install arch.

1) i have no clue about that stuff. ask on arch-releng, maybe there's
something on the bugtracker.
2) patches welcome. see btrfs thread on arch-general
3) we have dual-arch images. see recent archiso from git, and
http://build.archlinux.org/isos/
4) i don't know from the top of my head. quite some packages get
installed (see archiso in git again), namely the base group + more
packages. you could build your own media using less packages. ie only
the packages you need + dependencies of aif.


Dieter