Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 00:35:01 -0700 (MST) From: Scott Long <scottl@freebsd.org> To: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Discussion on the future of floppies in 5.x and 6.x Message-ID: <20040107235737.I32227@pooker.samsco.home>
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All, Every FreeBSD release cycle in the past year has hit bumps due to install floppy problems. This is becoming more and more of a burden on the Release Engineering Team, as we simply do not have the resources to constantly battle the floppies. FreeBSD/i386 is the only port left that generates install floppies. Their primary purpose is to fascilitate installing FreeBSD on systems where a CDROM is either not available or is incompatible with the 'Non-Emulated El Torito' boot method that we use on our CDs. Systems that cannot boot these CDs are typically those that are also not certified for WinNT4, Win2K, or WinXP. Thus, nearly all machines produced after 1997 can boot our CDs. It is certainly possible to run FreeBSD 5.x on machines of this and prior vintage, and I certainly do not want to dispute or question any motives here. However, the number of machines in this category is steadily declining as time goes on, while the effort put into supporting install floppies seems to be on the rise. I certainly do not want to orphan these machines, so we need to find a compromise. One solution is to find a dedicated 'floppy maintainer' that will frequently assess the floppies during the normal developement periods and work closely with the Release Engineering team to ensure that there are few surprises when it's time to cut a release. I would expect this person to develop and execute a test plan that covers all of the common aspects of installing via floppy: basic sanity checks, loading drivers, installing via the various mechanisms, etc. This person should also be comfortable with modifying makefiles and the sysinstall source. The other solution is to replace install floppies with an 'Emulated El Torito' CD image. I'm not going to go into the differences between 'non-emulated' and 'emulated' except to say that 'emulated' is the method used on FreeBSD 4.x (and prior), Win95, and Win98. Virtually every system in existance that supports a CDROM supports this method. This image would contain the loader, kernel, and MFS root, just like the current 'bootonly.iso' image, but would be configured for emulated booting. Users could download this image, burn it, boot it, and then install FreeBSD just like they normally would. Of course this adds the requirement of needing a CD burner, but these devices are becoming common enough that it could be a reasonable expectation. Switching to this method doesn't entirely remove the headache of release floppies, but it does make it signficantly easier to deal with them. The 'emulated' method actually uses a 2.88MB floppy image that combines the first two 1.44MB floppies that we traditionally produce. By combining them, we have a bit more flexibility since the driver modules that are on the second floppy can go back into the kernel image and benefit from the compression that happens there. So, this is something to consider before 5.3. After that, we are stuck with the consequences of whatever we choose (or don't choose) for the entire 5.x lifespan. I do not cherish the thought of fighting floppies for another 2-3 years. I'm happy to work with someone who steps forward and is committed to maintaining the floppies as they are today. Otherwise, we need to seriously consider the alternative. Thanks, Scott
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