Re: Portable Cygwin on a CD

[Igor Pechtchanski <pechtcha at cs dot nyu dot edu>]

Ronald,

Comments inline below...
	Igor

On Wed, 7 May 2003, Ronald Landheer-Cieslak wrote:

> On Tue, 6 May 2003 fergus@bonhard.uklinux.net wrote:
>
> > 1. There was a suggestion that the CD might usefully start with a
> > autorun.inf file. I feel a bit nervy about this. Two reasons: a. if the
> > host machine has Cygwin available then I would be inclined first to
> > investigate using that version, as the platform for any application I
> > might be interested in running; b. and if the host machine may even be
> > _running_ Cygwin at the time the CD is inserted, what would be the
> > potential confusion arising from an autorun script which would be
> > something like "\bin\rxvt -e /bin/bash --login -i" or whatever?
> As Setup knows whether Cygwin is installed or not, the autorun program
> should find that out too (and possibly in the same way - this is all open
> source software, so you can just reap the source ;)
>
> So: yes, it should check; no, it's not a show-stopper :)

"Reaping the source" can take many forms.  I'd prefer to have that program
as part of setup's distribution (or, at least, part of its source tree),
so they are always kept in lock-step.

> [snip]
> And if you do the same thing in an automated fashion? What does mount -m
> say if there's no mount table?

Nothing.  You can still save the output and "run" it afterwards -- after
all, an empty batch file will not do any harm.

> As I see it, the steps to do are:
> ? is Cygwin running?
> + * bail out
> * lock CD drive
> ? does a mount table exist?
> + * save it (or remember it)
> \ * hose it
> * install a new mount table
> * run rxvt, bash or whatever
> o ? is Cygwin still running
> \ - * break loop
> * hose the mount table
> * restore the old mount table (if there was one)
> * unlock the CD drive
>
> But that would mean:
> 1. developing a way to make sure Cygwin is either running, or it isn't.
>    Cygwin itself knows how to do this, so we can just reap it from there.
>    I think the easiest way to do this is to use Cygwin's shared memory
>    region - see if it's there.

See if Cygwin's installed (has a mount table), and if so, run /bin/ps?

> 2. develop a way to save & restore Cygwin's mount table
>    this basically boils down to calling mount
> 3. developing a way to lock the CD drive
>    kindly posted in this thread by Sam Edge, but will need some work for
>    Windows 9x
>
> We don't really have to care whether Cygwin is installed or not: if it
> isn't running, we're not going to use it (and if it is running, we can't
> do much of anything). That way, at least you know for sure that the tools
> you have on the CD are all available, and you even know which version of
> Cygwin you'll be running (i.e. the one on the CD).
>
> rlc

-- 
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