Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Tue, 15 Jan 2002 10:20:21 +1100
From:      Gregory Bond <gnb@itga.com.au>
To:        John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org>
Cc:        Gregory Bond <gnb@itga.com.au>, stable@FreeBSD.org, "Richard S. Conto" <rsc@merit.edu>
Subject:   Re: New cdboot ISO available 
Message-ID:  <200201142320.KAA12369@lightning.itga.com.au>
In-Reply-To: Your message of Mon, 14 Jan 2002 14:56:02 -0800.

next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
> Yes, but then who do you target the ISO at?  I'm trying to judge how widely
> used the older machines are and if we should still use boot.flp on the ISO's 
> to
> accomodate them.

It depends on the nature and ubiquity of the "newer devices" that get dropped
off kern.flp.  If we get to the stage where even a small fraction of new
systems aren't supported by kern.flp installs (because they come with RAID
cards etc that are not on kern.flp) then it will be time to change.  It's much
easier for middling-old systems to boot using kern.flp than it is for someone
(to pick a hypothetical example) with only a RAID controller not supported by
kern.flp to hand-craft a floppy boot image, or do a double install (once to
supported IDE drive, once to unsupported-by-kern.flp RAID device).  Unless we
want to get into the game of having a mix-n-match selection of kern.flp images!
(This might be doable if we have 2 kern.flp images - one for "older systems" 
from 386-P2, one for "newer systems" from P3/Duron on, to pick a somewhat 
arbitary convention that should at least be fairly easy to explain to newbies.)

My gut feel (admittedly a poor guide!) is that, while the majority of FreeBSD
_systems_ might be on older (pre-cdboot) hardware, these will likely be upgraded
in place (from source, or net packages). The majority of new _installs_ (i.e.
use of the boot CD) will be on newer hardware.

(Actually, there is probably a fair number of current or potential FreeBSD
systems from the 486/P5 era that don't support any form of CD booting, new or
old, but they are irrelevent to the current discussion.)




To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200201142320.KAA12369>