[Soc-coordination] kFreeBSD progress report week 4

[Luca Favatella]

Due to university homeworks/projects, I was busy the first part of the
previous week (week 3).

I focused on producing a d-i GNU/kFreeBSD image, being able to boot up
to a "welcome screen".


I updated the patches of the old kfreebsd branch [0] to apply to a
local working copy of d-i trunk.

When I tried to merge d-i trunk in the kfreebsd branch, I had no success.
My mentor helped me, recreating the kfreebsd branch equal to trunk.
After merging the changes from the old (r47541) kfreebsd branch [0], I
disabled those that were unneeded or not clear in my opinion.


I updated the kernel udeb (kfreebsd-kernel-di-i386)
-bumping the kernel version to 7.2
-disabling some modules for building success

I enabled building monolithic miniiso working on the config files and
on the packages list.
At the moment
-only a few udebs are included
-the library reduction step is skipped, using mklibs-copy
-ATA DMA is disabled, to semplify testing on qemu

I worked on the rootskel package, disabling
-the floppy binary and an unneeded dependency, to make the package building
-some Linux specific scripts, workarounding their use in other scripts


Using current d-i kfreebsd branch [1], d-i GNU/kFreeBSD monolithic
miniiso are buildable but they don't boot cleanly to a "welcome
screen".

To test the mini.iso, download [2] and boot it in your favourite
virtual machine; if it is qemu, execute "qemu -boot d -cdrom
mini.iso".
It will try to start a debug shell, showing a current known bug in the
GNU/kFreeBSD port of BusyBox ash. It stops the boot process, but you
will have a shell to play a bit.
Disabling the debug shell (when building the mini.iso), the boot
process goes forward but stops in a cdebconf templates related issue.


In the next 2 weeks, my goal will be still to have a d-i GNU/kFreeBSD
image being able to boot up to a "welcome screen".



Luca Favatella



[0] http://slackydeb.blogspot.com/2009/04/previous-attempts-to-port-d-i-to_27.html
[1] http://svn.debian.org/viewsvn/d-i/branches/d-i/kfreebsd/
[2] http://slackydeb.altervista.org/files/debian_gnu_kfreebsd/gsoc2009_kfreebsd_progress_report_week_4/mini.iso