gBootRoot 1.5.0 review

gBootRoot makes the construction and development of distributions fun and simple with its Root Methods (Yard) and user-mode-linux tes

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 0K Developer: Jonathan Rosenbaum

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gBootRoot makes the construction and development of distributions fun and simple with its Root Methods (Yard) and user-mode-linux test bed. Finish the product with a Boot Method (2-disk compression supported).

Normal (non-root) users can make root filesystems and boot disks. It includes the make_debian script to create a testable user-mode-linux base Debian system, add-ons to enhance methods, and an MTD Emulator useful for running distributions made with the jffs/jffs2 filesystem.

What's New in This Release:
Fixed a @INC problem with rpm packages. The fhs checks usually insert the module path (Debian std. path) into @INC via a BEGIN {}, but the new BootRoot::Options was trying to be loaded before the fact because it had been placed within the BEGIN{} and there was even a reminder in the code documentation from prior releases explaining not to do this. Updated BEGIN statements in gbootroot, expect_uml and yard_chrooted_tests, and made sure "." is always specified first in @INC.
Thanks to Stian Skjelstad for pointing out some bugs - namely the former annoying @INC bug that never should have occurred in the first place - after I asked him to try out gbootroot to help with his MTD requirements.
Added a new if/elsif control structure. if ( condition ) n statement(s) n elsif ( condition ) n statements elsif .. Nice functionality to have.
Made Example.yard portable with the new if/elsif control structure, and added pam.d/system-auth if it exists on the system.
Commented out many things in Helper.yard because UML.pm has been modified to allow no login along with no password, and provides a new method "close_no_init" to provide a shutdown marker after which uml_mconsole can be used to halt the process. This means faster creation time for root_fs and no lag.
Huge fixes to all source packages.
Added format rules found in Example* to the main documentation.
Compiled for >= glibc 2.2.5. Previous version was compiled >= 2.3.1 which caused some things not to work on old distributions using 2.2*
Removed the -q from expect_uml because this caused the newer version of mkreiserfs to fail because Namesys decided that unsolicited advertising was in order so everybody knows that there are actually some organizations and companies paying for its development. Wouldn't this be nice in a perfect world for all Free Software projects?
Tested on Debian stable/unstable and rpm based distros RedHat 7.3/8.0, Mandrake 9.0, and Suse 7.3 thanks to umlbuilder. Overall, this is by far the most heavily tested release to date. Observed that stack overflows are occxurring from time to time in the nested testing environment.
Added /usr/info/dir and info to make_debian which makes things much nicer.
Added libexpect-perl and libgtk-perl to Build-Depends for debs; in general, there were many fixes for both debs and rpms and their respective source packages.
Improved documentation.
Added stop and go to the uml_mconsole interface for the UML Box.
Made perl 5.8 compliant perl-IO-Stty, perl-IO-tty and perl-Expect rpm packages. Many things have changed especially with IO-tty and perl-Expect.
Had to build slram into the kernel because RedHat 7.3's depmod causes the build to fail.