[Olpc-open] debxo 0.2 release

[Andres Salomon]

On Sat, 25 Oct 2008 12:30:45 -0400
pgf at laptop.org wrote:

> andres wrote:
>  > 
>  > I've prepared a new release of DebXO.  This has a number of new
>  > features and desktops.
> 
> nice.  how does this interact with future "apt-get update"?  is
> there anything to watch out for (e.g., kernel getting
> overwritten, etc)?


Ah, glad you brought that up.  Apt should Just Work for the majority
of the distribution, but there are 3 custom packages; ofw-config (which
manages /boot/olpc.fth), linux-2.6.25.15 (which manages the kernel), and
initramfs-tools (which manages the initramfs/initrd).  ofw-config and
linux-2.6.25.15 should never be automatically upgraded (since debian's
kernel package is called linux-image-2.6.25-X, and ofw-config isn't in
debian), but initramfs-tools might be.  The customizations to
initramfs-tools basically ensure certain modules get added to the initrd
and loaded; redboot, jffs2, lxfb, and so on.  I'll be sending those
patches upstream, but I think it's too late to get them into lenny.
They should make it into the next debian release, though.

In short, be very careful w/ initramfs-tools; don't upgrade it.  I'm
hoping the next debxo release has its custom packages simply backported,
rather than completely outside of debian.

As far as upgrading the kernel, it depends on how it's built.  Note that
/boot/olpc.fth uses /vmlinuz and /vmlinuz.old symlinks, so make sure that
they're pointed to the correct image after you've upgraded.  If you're
building a custom kernel and everything's modular, you need to make sure
the initramfs-tools hasn't been upgraded.  If you're building the
modules needed to boot (cafe_nand, redboot, jffs2) statically into
the kernel, the initramfs-tools package can mostly be ignored.