On Wed, 2009-10-14 at 22:41 -0600, Paul E Condon wrote: > ... I prepared a new partition and used my netinstall CD to install a > complete Xfce system there. This is not the first time I have > installed Debian, so everything went pretty smoothly and shortly I had > an Xfce system up and running and looking like the screen shots > on the web, but... > > It didn't seem to have a way to mount memory sticks like I had > become used to under Gnome, particularly the automatic creation > of a mount-point in /media using the volume label for the name. > > ... I finally determined, to my satisfaction, > that the hal package was needed to make the feature work. [..] > > Anyway, I think that hal should be included in the Xfce install that > is burnt into the netinstall CD.
Well, Xfce's file manager is thunar. The thing is that thunar does "recommends" hal, so aptitude would install it by default when you install xfce. Until Lenny Debian-Installer,including tasksel, did not install the "recommended" packages, but only packages. At the same time, Debian installer uses the Tasks and virtual package to list the package that should be installed for each type of installation (gnome, xfce... laptop,desktop... fileserver, webserver...). AFAIK, the purpose was to be able to finely tune the content of Gnome/KDE/XFCE/LXDE, to fit the maximum into the CD. (this is done very late in the release cycle). In Squeeze, DebianInstaller might install all recommends by default (the issue is that it would increase the default installation size significantly) > I know that Xfce is an avowedly > minimalist environment, but the Debian install version of Xfce is > definately not minimal. Thunar maintainer seems to agree with you, since thunar "recommends" hal (otherwise, it would be "suggested" only) > So it seems to me that this package was simply overlooked when > configuring tasksel, but maybe not. may be. > What is the package that determines what gets put into the tasksel for > each of the different environments? I'd like this to get on a to-do > list for the up-coming Squeeze netinstall CD. The description and content of tasksel tasks are contained in tasksel-data's /usr/share/tasksel/debian-tasks.desc Read http://wiki.debian.org/KDE http://wiki.debian.org/Gnome for more information about DesktopEnvironements tasks. I have little interest in Xfce, so I never updated the page http://wiki.debian.org/Xfce > An afterthought: Why does tasksel continue to exist and be used? The Debian-Installer team are the right person to ask. As I mentioned above, I think it's essentially to determine the content of Debian CDs. > I know of no way to look up what will be installed before I ask > commit to a run of tasksel. If I try something and there is a disaster, > I have very little to go on to try to clean up the mess. But the > apt system and aptitude are very helpful in avoiding serious errors. tasksel has a test mode, the the manpage. > The developers who configure tasksel for various situations surely > know how to write package dependency lists. If special packages of > packages for various popular cibfugurations were written, then people > like me could use aptitude to determine what goes into a big, messy > thing like a fully configured desktop environment. I believe they are aware of the problem. However, tasksel is used, very late in the release process, to finely tune what is installed in the CDs. You can read http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2009/03/msg00413.html Did you install Debian Lenny or Debian Testing ? If you installed testing, You should file an installation-report bug, using : reportbug installation‐report And quickly explain that Xfce should install hal. Regards, Franklin -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
