Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 16:16:28 -0700 From: BSD <bsd@xtremedev.com> To: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Discussion on the future of floppies in 5.x and 6.x Message-ID: <20040108231628.GA9254@Amber.XtremeDev.com> In-Reply-To: <20040108221038.GN48603@over-yonder.net> References: <20040107235737.I32227@pooker.samsco.home> <20040108143934.GA51446@ussenterprise.ufp.org> <20040108153610.GW53429@silverwraith.com> <20040108221038.GN48603@over-yonder.net>
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On Thu, Jan 08, 2004 at 04:10:38PM -0600, Matthew D. Fuller wrote: > On Thu, Jan 08, 2004 at 07:36:10AM -0800 I heard the voice of > Avleen Vig, and lo! it spake thus: > > > > If I understand you right.. > > A floppy boot, which loads the absolutely basic stuff (network drivers, > > and some easy way to config the network) and then goes and grabs the > > installer would otherwise be on the current floppies and "boots" it? > > Many (most?) Linux dists do this for floppy installs. I've come around > to thinking it a better and better idea lately. It makes it easy to have > much more bloa... er, "featureful" installers, particularly more > graphical ones, since you're no longer limited by the size of a floppy. > And even cheap DSL is faster than a floppy drive for loading it, to boot > (no pun ;). And you can even provide for loading it off a local CD, if > you have a CD drive you can't boot from. > > The downside is that writing such a beast is a lot more work... Take what I'm babbling about with a huge grain of salt, since I probably have no idea what I'm talking about... How hard would it be to take something like etherboot and building a single install floppy from that? And have a FreeBSD kernel/installer hosted on a public nfs/tftp server? Ie., the user pops in the etherboot floppy, it asks for network setup info, we tell it to use ftp.freebsd.org, and it goes out and either nfs mounts or tftp the kernel and installer and drivers. Then proceed from there to installing FreeBSD onto the system. I suppose that's what you just said.. But was just thinking that it'd be easier modifying an existing system (ie., etherboot) than writing one from scratch.. Note: I just mentioned etherboot because that was the first thing that came to mind. I'm sure there are other systems better suited or licensed for what's needed.
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