From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Sat May 3 16:25:20 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EBD4E37B401 for ; Sat, 3 May 2003 16:25:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: from octopus.com.au (octopus.com.au [61.8.3.8]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 140BE43F85 for ; Sat, 3 May 2003 16:25:20 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from duraid@octopus.com.au) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by octopus.com.au (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3B450D7ACB1; Sun, 4 May 2003 09:25:09 +1000 (EST) Received: by octopus.com.au (Postfix, from userid 1047) id EC288D7AB1A; Sun, 4 May 2003 09:25:08 +1000 (EST) Received: from octopus.com.au (m061-029.nv.iinet.net.au [203.217.61.29]) (using TLSv1 with cipher RC4-MD5 (128/128 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by octopus.com.au (Postfix) with ESMTP id 59A7BD7AB01; Sun, 4 May 2003 09:25:07 +1000 (EST) Message-ID: <3EB44FD3.30601@octopus.com.au> Date: Sun, 04 May 2003 09:25:07 +1000 From: Duraid Madina User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.4b) Gecko/20030502 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "Cliff L. Biffle" References: <3EB3C118.6020203@octopus.com.au> <200305031509.19473.cbiffle@safety.net> In-Reply-To: <200305031509.19473.cbiffle@safety.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Spam-Status: No, hits=-31.9 required=7.0 tests=EMAIL_ATTRIBUTION,IN_REP_TO,QUOTED_EMAIL_TEXT,REFERENCES, REPLY_WITH_QUOTES,USER_AGENT_MOZILLA_UA version=2.53 X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 2.53 (1.174.2.15-2003-03-30-exp) X-Virus-Scanned: by AMaViS new-20020517 cc: current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Floppy Support X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 03 May 2003 23:25:21 -0000 Cliff L. Biffle wrote: > On Saturday 03 May 2003 06:16 am, Duraid Madina wrote: > >>Can anyone give a *good* reason why floppies should still be supported >>from this point onwards? > > > 1. El Torito. Last I checked, under emulation, 2.88MB was the largest boot > image available, so fitting the bootloader/kernel/etc. onto two floppies is > still quite significant. We could use El Torito's "type 4" hard disk emulation. Installing FreeBSD from such an environment seems a little gross, but religiously mangling kernels to fit onto 1.44Mb floppies seems worse. > I've only run across one machine that could > competently handle non-emulated CD booting. Time to update those 486s. The El Torito spec is dated January 1995, you know. ;) > 2. Servers without CDROM drives. As another poster mentioned, 1U rack or > clustering servers frequently don't have CDROMs. I know mine don't. Fine. PXE boot. What sort of sick f!#ker adds a floppy but leaves a CD out, anyway? And if you're missing both, surely it's somewhat less painful to walk around with a USB CDROM drive than to walk around with a pair of boot floppies? > I'm still confused as to why the $CVS$ tags are going into the kernel on the > floppies, but that strikes me as minor. :-) Indeed. Duraid