On Tue, Apr 22, 2025 at 05:18:19PM -0700, Gregory Nowak via Dng wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 22, 2025 at 04:53:14PM +1000, Ralph Ronnquist via Dng wrote:
> > My preference foro such testing is to use debootstrap, to create a
> > filesystem that I can chroot into. With excalibur's debootstrap, I
> > would do:
>
> Thanks Ralph. Normally I would do the same if I don't need a full
> system with GUI. In this case, doing a chroot based install raises the
> following problems:
>
> 1. I don't get a full sysvinit boot up. I have to start everything I
> need by hand, and I'll probably still be missing stuff that should be started.
>
> 2. The host system already has a apache and postfix bound to
> localhost, so in a chroot I'd have to play with changing TCP ports,
> maybe more.
>
> 3. I'll need the mate desktop with firefox, and I'm not sure I can
> simply do startx in a chroot, and have that going. Granted, I can
> start firefox on the host system, but that still means messing with
> TCP ports.
>
> So, to rephrase my question, is the process I described the best way
> to install Ceres in a virtual machine? Thanks.

What do you mean with "best"? And why do you ask?

For example, the minbase chroot can be expanded with e.g.
linux-image-amd64, busybox-static, virtiofsd and ifupdown, so as to
have a virtual machine ready filesystem. Then you may add 9p, 9pnet
and 9pnet_virtio to its /etc/initramfs-tools/modules, a short script
in its /etc/initramfs-tools/scripts/init-premount/, followed by an
extra update-initramfs run within the chroot and "passwd" to set a
root password.

With that you may start a qemu virtual machine using the chroot
filesystm as its root filesystem, and boot with that kernel and
initrd. It's a fun way to spin up a virtual machine where its root
filesystem is a directory tree of the host, and I think the method
could well be in the race for being the "best" :)

But dist-upgrading an excalibur is certainly good too.

regards,

Ralph.

> Greg
>
>
> --
> web site: http://www.gregn.net
> gpg public key: http://www.gregn.net/pubkey.asc
>
> --
> Free domains: http://www.eu.org/ or mail dns-manager@???
> _______________________________________________
> Dng mailing list
> Dng@???
> Manage your subscription: https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
> Archive: https://lists.dyne.org/lurker/list/dng.en.html