New 0.5 draft of the SemPiTernal HOWTO

[Eric S. Raymond]

Frank <frank at nicholasfamilycentral.com>:
> Comments below - not finished, but didn’t have time to read all (on the road).

It's a good first pass.  To be refined later.

To avoid wasting your time, I'll skip answers to questions that have
been dealt with in other mail, also simple typo fixes.

> Note that my Pi 3’s (latest & fastest) take 60+ seconds to boot & be
> pingable.  Then about another 10-20 seconds to be available via SSH
> (depending on wired or wireless)

By hypothesis our connection is wired.

I'm seeing much faster bootup than this - I don't think I've had to wait
for ssh availability longer than 30 seconds.  I wonder what accounts
for the difference?

> For adding group changes, why not use `usermod`.  Users editing
> config files are more prone to messing them up, than letting the
> utilities make the changes.

....

When did this happen?  When did usermod become a thing?  It's a great idea
but I had no idea it existed until just now.

Will do.


> Is “Wait for Network at Boot” really required?  On my Gentoo Pi's
> with dhcpcd, it will background wait indefinitely (maybe my Gentoo
> configuration setting) , and will grab an IP when a cable is
> connected.

I'm not sure if it's necessary, but it seems like a good belt-and-suspenders
move.

> Regarding updating and installing pieces - do all SBC’s use Debian based “apt”?

Raspbian does.  So does the Odroid, and so does Beaglebone.  That's enough range
for now.

> “The Pi 3 Raspbian implementors” was actually the Pi 3 hardware
> designer/manufacturer (Raspberry Pi Foundation) - they created the
> default mapping of BT vs. Serial.  This is not Raspbian’s fault or
> decision.

Revised.

> “/boot” is not mounted by default.  To check for overlays, they may
> have to mount “/boot”

It's premounted in the lastest Jessie Lite image.  Under what circumstances
might it not be?

> I’m not following the “blink” table.  It’s not jumping out at me or
>  making sense…

LED blink interval in seconds - telly you fix vs no fix.

> For cloning a GIT repository, I’ve used “- - depth=1” to get what I
> think is just the top, latest version?  If my understanding is
> correct, this will be quicker for people on slow connections.  If
> I’m wrong about what this does in GIT, please correct my
> understanding.  Is there a down side to using depth=1?

Will a later git pull work on a repo pulled this way?
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>