Hi everyone,
I've been working on a tool similar to debootstrap but designed to work
with RPM-based distributions. The intent of such a tool is to be able to
bootstrap a basic working RPM-based system (I use it primarily for
creating chroots for cross-distro development and testing, but it could
also be used for simple installs or even upgrade and dep-closure tests).
It's called "rpmstrap" and it currently works "pretty
well" with
i[3456]86 versions of Fedora Core 2, Fedora Core 3, and CentOS 4. You
can get it here:
http://hackers.progeny.com/~sam/rpmstrap/
QND instructions on using it to build a basic CentOS 4 chroot can be
found here:
http://trac.samhart.net/trac/wiki/rpmstrap_CentOS4
Up until now, it's primarily been an internal tool I've been using for
cross-distro work, but I would like to release it more generally. Before
I do this, however, I'd really love some feedback from some of the
CentOS 4 community to be sure I haven't done anything too screwy with
the basic CentOS 4 packages my CentOS 4 suite script installs.
It's really intended to be an extremely basic system, but one which you
can quickly chroot into and "yum install" whatever you need above and
beyond... That being said, I essentially started with packages that I
wanted and did my best to solve the deps for them, so I may be missing
some things that "should" be in a basic CentOS 4 system.
Feedback /probably/ isn't appropriate for the CentOS mailing list, so
please just send them directly to me.
KNOWN ISSUES: (so I don't get emails about them ;-)
* x86_64 does not work on any of the suites except for /maybe/
FC2. I honestly haven't had access to an x86_64 box to test, and
I also haven't had the need for x86_64 chroots. x86_64 patches
would be gratefully accepted :-D
* Several parameters are listed but not implemented yet. Things
like excluding and adding packages are presently just planned.
* It doesn't really determine the native architecture in a way I
feel is as portable as in debootstrap.
* The docs for writing new suite scripts (or even understanding
what wacky stuff is going on in them) aren't there yet.
--
'''''''''''''''''''''''''
.O. Sam Hart, sam at progeny.com
..O Progeny Linux Systems, Inc
OOO <http://www.progeny.com/>
