[gentoo-releng] x86 (ppc?) cd layout for 2004.0

[Daniel Robbins]

Hi guys,

I realize that this is a bit late to bring this up, but I wanted to
suggest an optimized organization for our x86 CDs.

Traditionally, we've had 5 disc 1's and 5 disc 2's. What I'm proposing
is that we move to 1 disc 1 and 5 disc 2's. There would be one disc 1
for all our sub-architectures. This would help the store in that we'd
have fewer unique CDs to produce. It would also remove about 2GB from
the mirrors.

Here's how disc1 would be organized (I'm using shorthand names for the
files):

(runtime data, about 75 MB)
/stages
	x86-stage1.tar.bz2
	x86-stage3.tar.bz2
	i686-stage3.tar.bz2
	pentium3-stage3.tar.bz2
	pentium4-stage3.tar.bz2
	athlon-xp-stage3.tar.bz2
/snapshots
	portage.tar.bz2
/distfiles
	225MB of sources (everything needed to go from
	stage1 to stage3 and to boot the system, plus kernel 	sources,
kernel-dependent ebuild sources, and if 	there's	room, X sources.

Necessary changes to the docs to accomodate this: mention that if the
user wants to install from stage2, the stage2 will need to be grabbed
from our mirrors using wget. Most users don't use stage2, so this won't
impact very many people.

Users no longer need to do a cp -a /mnt/cdrom/packages/All/* step for
CD1. This simplifies installation. The downside to this is that
things like metalog and vixie-cron will need to be compiled from
source. This isn't too horrible since they don't take particularly
long to compile. And the sources for these packages will be included
on CD1.

The lack of .tbz2s on CD1 would also mean that for the entire
installation process up to the first reboot, you don't need to use
"emerge -k." But using emerge with a -k would still continue to work.
This could allow for simplification of the docs (remove unnecessary '-k'
references.)

All in all, this would require very few changes to our existing install
procedure. No significant changes would be necessary.

CD2 would contain pre-built packages (the *entire* GRP set) for a
particular sub-arch, such as athlon-xp. The user would be able to pull
from the GRP set after he/she reboots the box into his new install and
mounts CD2.

I think this new layout is a good idea for several reasons. First of
all, it helps the store to deal with our continually increasing order
level, which will probably skyrocket with the 2004.0 release. I will
need to outsource the production of at least some of our CDs, and doing
1 run of 2500 CDs is a *lot* cheaper than doing 5 runs of 500 CDs.

Second, it takes some load off our mirrors, and gives users only one CD1
to download for all of x86, and the CD1 that they get is a lot more
versatile than what we currently offer. The 2GB freed up on the mirrors
could be used for the upcoming x86 KDE/GNOME LiveCD, as well as one or
two other special catalyst LiveCDs. This allows us to offer more cool
stuff to our users without adding any additional bloat to our mirrors.

Likewise, if this is adopted for PPC, it would allow us to have
potentially 1 instead of 3 (or maybe even 4?) disc 1's, and reduce our
mirror load by an additional 900MB to 1.4GB. It would also give ppc
users one CD1 to download that provides them with pre-built stage3's for
ppc, g3, g4 (32-bit g5?) which I think many would find convenient.

Please let me know what you think of this new layout proposal.

Regards,

Daniel


--
gentoo-releng@g.o mailing list