From owner-freebsd-alpha Tue Nov 5 12:38: 8 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-alpha@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B8BB337B401; Tue, 5 Nov 2002 12:38:06 -0800 (PST) Received: from duke.cs.duke.edu (duke.cs.duke.edu [152.3.140.1]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7EEA543E75; Tue, 5 Nov 2002 12:38:02 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from gallatin@cs.duke.edu) Received: from grasshopper.cs.duke.edu (grasshopper.cs.duke.edu [152.3.145.30]) by duke.cs.duke.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id PAA00136; Tue, 5 Nov 2002 15:37:37 -0500 (EST) Received: (from gallatin@localhost) by grasshopper.cs.duke.edu (8.11.6/8.9.1) id gA5Kb7h36104; Tue, 5 Nov 2002 15:37:07 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from gallatin@cs.duke.edu) From: Andrew Gallatin MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <15816.11251.598960.561263@grasshopper.cs.duke.edu> Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2002 15:37:07 -0500 (EST) To: John Baldwin Cc: Matthias Buelow , "alpha@freebsd.org" Subject: Re: HEADS UP, floppy installs desupported for 5.0 (fwd) In-Reply-To: References: <3DC81868.9080700@mukappabeta.de> X-Mailer: VM 6.75 under 21.1 (patch 12) "Channel Islands" XEmacs Lucid Sender: owner-freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org John Baldwin writes: > > On 05-Nov-2002 Matthias Buelow wrote: > > John Baldwin wrote: > > > >> This is what we do already. Even i386 now uses 3 floppies to install. The problem is > >> that a really, really stripped down 5.0 kernel still doesn't fit onto kern.flp with the > >> loader. > > > > Why can't it span several floppies, then? > > I don't know the innards of the boot-loader being used but > > where's the problem simply printing a "insert next floppy" when > > loading from one floppy is done, and continue reading the kernel > > with the next floppy? A similar things is being done with mfsroot > > anyways, isn't it? Why should the capacity of a floppy disk > > restrict the size of kernels being booted? > > We do not currently do this with the mfsroot, it all fits onto > mfsroot.flp. As I said earlier, someone did write and commit > code for a "splitfs" fs to the loader so that it can do exactly > this, but no one has played with getting the scripts to use that > feature. I think you may be misunderstanding. I think what is being suggested is 4 separate fs's. floppy 1 contains: /boot/loader /boot/loader.rc floppy 2 contains: /kernel.gz floppy 3 contains: /modules/foo.. floppy 4 contains: /modules/morefoo The loader.rc would look like this: echo \\007\\007 echo Please insert Kernel floppy and press enter: echo \\007\\007 echo Please insert MFS root floppy and press enter: load -t mfs_root /mfsroot This means serious diddling with the twisty mess of ${TARGETS} in /usr/src/release/Makefile, if anybody interested in floppys is up for it. I'm not really interested in floppy installs, so I'll bow out here and leave it to the intersted parties. Drew To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-alpha" in the body of the message