Bug 169159 – LiveCD should include kernel sources + binaries (symfile!) for compiling drivers

• Product: Gentoo Release Media
• Status: RESOLVED INVALID

[Description sg313 2007-03-03 17:17:04 UTC]

As the installation medias are released only twice a year, i'd recommend to include the full kernel tree used to build the kernel in the live file system.
Drivers that were not available could then be easily installed; This is especially important for network device drivers.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:

[Comment 1 Jakub Moc (RETIRED) 2007-03-03 17:21:39 UTC]

Yeah, that will only take ~250 MB of precious space that could be used for something *useful* otherwise.

[Comment 2 sg313 2007-03-03 17:50:40 UTC]

(In reply to comment #1)
> Yeah, that will only take ~250 MB of precious space that could be used for
> something *useful* otherwise.
> 

Oh, come on, you're aware of tar and bzip2... And there are plenty of solutions
to the 'space' problem. You could, for example, put the tar.bz2'ed kernel on the mirrors; It could then be transfered via usb storage etc. into the live system. But having no ability to add drivers is very limiting.
Besides, I'd still prefer a bigger image to an image that turns out to be useless because it's impossible get the net drivers running. 

Also it's simply a fact that the kernel on the live cds is outdated; With 
the releasecycle of the kernel and the half-a-year-schedule at some point it must. (take a look at the current portage tree: 2.6.17-r7 is not even in there anymore.)

[Comment 3 Andrew Gaffney (RETIRED) 2007-03-03 18:24:46 UTC]

You're free to use Knoppix or some other livecd to install Gentoo if you wish. You can also use catalyst to build your own CD with all the sources you want.