installing Carmen from scratch

[David Shirvanyan]

I have managed to install Carmen from scratch onto my Alphaserver DS10.
I used the kernel and anaconda packages from the Carmen tree by
Mike Barnes. Here is the brief list of what needs to be fixed:

1. Add the line "alpha" : "noarch" into the list
of architectures in the /usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/rhpl/arch.py
Otherwise the installer ignores the noarch packages.
2. Correct the line initrd = "/boot/initrd%s.img" ...
in the /usr/lib/booty/booty.py (must be
initrd = "/boot/initrd-%s.img"... ).
Otherwise the installer won't add initrd= option to the aboot.conf
3. Add aboot into the list of packages in comps.xml.
Otherwise the installer won't be able to write the bootloader
to the hard disk.
4. Rebuild the hdlist files. Those in the Carmen tree are slightly
out of sync with the actual package collection.

I have used the text-based installation method because this machine
is the network server and I don't have extra mouse to attach.
I have run the NFS-based installation, and not tried other methods.
I have also made the installation files available at
http://dl9s6.chem.unc.edu/carmen in case someone wants to try
and install Carmen from scratch.