FS#11151 - quickinst doesn't work since new release of pacman (3.2.0)

Attached to Project: Release Engineering
Opened by Sergey Samokhin (Myav) - Friday, 08 August 2008, 21:05 GMT
Last edited by Aaron Griffin (phrakture) - Sunday, 25 January 2009, 00:05 GMT
Task Type Bug Report
Category Installation
Status Closed
Assigned To Simo Leone (neotuli)
Aaron Griffin (phrakture)
Architecture All
Severity Critical
Priority Normal
Reported Version None
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 100%
Votes 0
Private No

Details

Description:

Subj. quickinst fails on getting packages.txt

I tested this with ftp://ftp.archlinux.org/core/os/i686 and
ftp://mirror.yandex.ru/archlinux/core/os/i686 mirrors

I use quickinst from 2008.06 (Overlord) iso

Steps to reproduce:

Just boot with Overlord iso (I use usb-stick)
Then type 'dhcpcd eth0', and then type

cd /arch && quickinst ftp /mnt ftp://ftp.archlinux.org/core/os/i686

You will see this error message:

---------------------------------------------------------
--2008-08-09 00:57:05-- ftp://ftp.archlinux.org/core/os/i686/packages.txt
=> `packages.txt'
Resolving ftp.archlinux.org... 209.85.41.145, 209.85.41.144
Connecting to ftp.archlinux.org|209.85.41.145|:21... connected.
Logging in as anonymous ... Logged in!
==> SYST ... done. ==> PWD ... done.
==> TYPE I ... done. ==> CWD /core/os/i686 ... done.
==> SIZE packages.txt ... done.
==> PASV ... done. ==> RETR packages.txt ...
No such file `packages.txt'.

error: Could not fetch package list from server
-----------------------------------------------------------
This task depends upon

Closed by  Aaron Griffin (phrakture)
Sunday, 25 January 2009, 00:05 GMT
Reason for closing:  Fixed
Comment by Greg (dolby) - Saturday, 09 August 2008, 07:32 GMT
See  FS#11142  . packages.txt isnt used anymore. i guess the script should be either dropped or rewritten
Comment by Sergey Samokhin (Myav) - Saturday, 09 August 2008, 18:45 GMT
Oh no, please don't dropp it!
Comment by j (ice799) - Wednesday, 13 August 2008, 19:08 GMT
Hi -

This is pretty easy to fix and I've tried these fixes locally. If you git clone the latest quickinst and setup scripts, unpack the initrd.img for the 2008.03 and earlier ISOs, copy the scripts in, repack the initrd, and regenerate the ISO - the install works fine.

So it seems all that is needed is to update the older isos with newer copies of the quickinst and setup scripts.
Comment by Sergey Samokhin (Myav) - Thursday, 14 August 2008, 15:31 GMT
quickinst obrained by this command:

git clone git://projects.archlinux.org/installer.git

is the same as quickinst from archlinux-installer-2008.06-1 package and have the same problem. md5 sums of the files are identical.

Did you check both quickinst and setup files? Setup works fine, but not quickinst.
Comment by Dale Blount (dale) - Friday, 15 August 2008, 13:57 GMT
We can't drop it - it's the only way to install onto raid/lvm currently iirc.
Comment by This Account (and mail) is dead. (macaronyde) - Tuesday, 19 August 2008, 10:34 GMT
How about changing the script to fetch the "base" group instead of checking the packages.txt?
This should give the same result.
..by the way the new pacman release doesn't contain a static version, so the script/package could not be used standalone
Comment by Alexandre Gravier (agravier) - Thursday, 21 August 2008, 10:50 GMT
Removing packages.txt (http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/11142) was a bad move, I think it hurt several ppl. In my case, I have to use 2007.08 (the ftp one, because it's small), which is still available on all mirror (one could expect it to be installable then). But now, the package selection will just fail without packages.txt...
Comment by Xavier (shining) - Friday, 22 August 2008, 22:00 GMT
Since the main installer was fixed here :
http://projects.archlinux.org/?p=installer.git;a=commitdiff;h=8c6d8e5a1f9df82f5d41c4b9062d40b925ec862c
Maybe someone could steal some ideas from it to fix quickinst?
It might be better to just have a look at the setup script directly rather than the above patch :
http://projects.archlinux.org/?p=installer.git;a=blob;f=setup;hb=HEAD
Comment by Michael Towers (gradgrind) - Sunday, 07 September 2008, 10:00 GMT
You might also like to look at the 'inpacs' script from larch, which does something fairly similar (at least to get ideas). I have worked around the lost packages.txt by using the base group. I have worked around the lost pacman.static by packaging the dynamic pacman with its needed libraries and providing this as a download.
   inpacs (9.2 KiB)
Comment by henning mueller (phects) - Sunday, 14 September 2008, 21:27 GMT
I originally began a script to install arch for use as a xen guest and modified it for use as spare of the original quickinst script. The syntax differs strongly from the original script and currently there's no function to use the cd as source, but i'm up to add it. This script can be used to install arch linux from other linux distributions, too.

The most current version can be obtained by cheking out svn://svn.orgizm.net/svn/collective/quickinst
Please have a look at it!
Comment by Glenn Matthys (RedShift) - Friday, 05 December 2008, 10:41 GMT
What's the status of this? Has the quickinst script been updated or dropped?
Comment by henning mueller (phects) - Thursday, 18 December 2008, 21:36 GMT
I want to ask another time, what the status is. I no longer know anyone who uses the ncurses setup (despite of the fact, that the quickinst is broken). Additionally LVM, dm_raid and dm_crypt became somehow default.

Another link to my version of the quickinst script (directly to the code, this time):
http://svn.orgizm.net/collective/browser/quickinst/quickinst
Comment by Aaron Griffin (phrakture) - Thursday, 18 December 2008, 21:49 GMT
We will most likely be dropping all this in favor of Dieter's AIF (ArchLinux Installation Framework) in the future

Just an FYI, I would suggest working with him if you want your patches merged.
Comment by Aaron Griffin (phrakture) - Wednesday, 14 January 2009, 21:51 GMT
Can someone confirm if the latest quickinst from git works?
http://projects.archlinux.org/?p=installer.git;a=blob;f=quickinst
Comment by Evangelos Foutras (foutrelis) - Sunday, 25 January 2009, 00:02 GMT
@Aaron Griffin, works like a charm.

Loading...