Re: [LUG] Creating a small filesystem from RPMS

[Andrew Rogers <andrew@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Simon Waters wrote:

> Andrew Rogers wrote:
>  
>
> > I need to create a directory structure that will be mounted over NFS as
> > a root filesystem on a remote machine.
> >
> > An RPM based distro (Fedora Core 1 in this case) has the RPMs that I
> > need to extract to create this filesystem. The host machine that I will
> > use to create this filesystem will run another GNU/Linux distro (not
> > necesarrily Fedora), hence I can't copy the hosts filesytem files.
> >
> > I have tried converting the RPMs to CPIO archives but then the
> > post-install RPM scripts don't run. I think the key may be to get the
> > RPM databases onto the filesystem first, but how?
> >    
>
> rpm supports "--root".
Yep, that worked for me, thanks.

> The Debian reference guide explains how to run Debian "unstable" in a
> subdirectory of Debian "stable", overkill for your needs, but installing
> Debian to a subdirectory is step 1 from what I recall.
That's almost what I want to do, but setup to run on a remote CPU.

> Booting off a file system on a remote share is standard practice in many
> places (Google "linux diskless workstations"), but not something I've
> done, I use to boot lots of SUNs and xterms using tftp - happy days....
>  
I have used LTSP, uses tftp to get the kernel. I need my own distro, my 
diskless number crunchers will also be monitor-less. I think such a 
cluster is called a Beowulf. I will certainly be stealing some ideas 
from LTSP to help my new project. The distro that I make will consist 
mainly of files taken from a community developed distro such as Fedora 
Core or Debian. For my project I am concerned with booting the remote 
machine and creating the filesystem, the packages are taken care of by 
Fedora Core or Debian developers.

Another RPM question: If I do:

# rpm --root=/home/andrew/tmp/rootfs/ -ivh 
/mnt/cdrom/Fedora/RPMS/bash-2.05b-31.i386.rpm

I get the following:

warning: /mnt/cdrom/Fedora/RPMS/bash-2.05b-31.i386.rpm: V3 DSA 
signature: NOKEY, key ID 4f2a6fd2
error: Failed dependencies:
       libc.so.6 is needed by bash-2.05b-31
       libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.0) is needed by bash-2.05b-31
       libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.1) is needed by bash-2.05b-31
       libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.2) is needed by bash-2.05b-31
       libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.3) is needed by bash-2.05b-31
       libdl.so.2 is needed by bash-2.05b-31
       libdl.so.2(GLIBC_2.0) is needed by bash-2.05b-31
       libdl.so.2(GLIBC_2.1) is needed by bash-2.05b-31
       libtermcap.so.2 is needed by bash-2.05b-31
       mktemp is needed by bash-2.05b-31

Is there anyway that RPM can install these depedencies without manually 
installing each RPM? I don't want to use a long list of RPMs to install 
since I would have to update the list for different distros.

I haven't tried creating a filesystem from .debs yet, but presumably I 
must install apt on my host (which isn't running Debian)? or will alien 
convert .debs to RPMs with 100% reliability?

Thanks
Andrew


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