Hi,
time for a much needed update to the Arch installation media, as the last
release (2010.05)
is not only quite outdated, but now yields broken installations if
you do a netinstall (because the old installer is not aware of the changed
kernel/initramfs filename in our new Linux 3.0 packages).
What has changed in this period of more than a year?
AIF (installation tool):
- Experimental support for btrfs and nilfs2.
- Support syslinux bootloader, as well as grub.
- Changes to configuration formats to support new rc.conf and linux3.0
- Make selecting source more flexible (multiple local and/or remote repos)
- Show package descriptions when installing packages
- Run with debugging and logging enabled by default, add /arch/report-issues script
- Make automatic profiles switch source depending on whether core or netinstall system is running
- Remove support for tcp_wrappers in accordance to Arch Linux policy
libui.sh (bash UI framework):
- Made long checklists much easier in CLI mode, by using $EDITOR
- More flexible initialization
Archiso (image builds):
- Snapshot of current core, including kernel 3.0.3-1, pacman 3.5.4-3, glibc 2.14-4, mkinitcpio 0.7.2-1, initscripts 2011.07.3-1 and netcfg 2.6.7-1
- Big overhaul: use dm-snapshot instead of aufs2
- All needed files to boot for custom USB media installed on /arch
- Allow changing NBD export name
- Allow using serial console (kernel parameter: console)
- Allow starting custom script (kernel parameter: script), autologin tty1.
- Add self integrity test (kernel parameter: checksum=y)
- Add support to mount iso in loopback mode
- Added packages: btrfs-progs-unstable crda curl dhclient dialog dnsmasq hdparm netcfg nilfs-utils openconnect rp-pppoe rsync vpnc wpa_actiond
- Removed packages: aufs2 aufs2-util joe ndiswrapper ndiswrapper-utils tiacx tiacx-firmware
- Remove x86test, add HDT to initial syslinux menu
- Add support for booting from memdisk
- XZ compression for SquashFS and initramfs.
Obviously there's more, such as bunches of code cleanups and bugfixes, but this should be the most important.
The Official installation guide has been updated to reflect the changes where necessary.
Please assure tickets exist in the bugtracker - Release Engineering project for any issues you may find. To get in touch, join the arch-releng mailing list or visit the #arch-releng IRC channel