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To: Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au>
cc: julian@ref.tfs.com, hackers@freefall.freebsd.org
Subject: Re: FreeBSD 2.1 will require a minimum of 8MB for installation. 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Sat, 30 Sep 1995 21:04:14 +1000."
             <199509301104.VAA31420@godzilla.zeta.org.au> 
Date: Sat, 30 Sep 1995 09:49:18 -0700
Message-ID: <20502.812479758@time.cdrom.com>
From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>
Sender: owner-hackers@FreeBSD.org
Precedence: bulk

> It's not easy, but we have barely tried to keep the kernel small.  I
> knew of the following bloat:
> 
> 1) The gzipped installation kernel.  Saves space on install disks, wastes
>    space in the running kernel.

Well, do bear in mind that the installation kernel is overlayed by a
*non* gzipped kernel in the bindist.  We're only talking about trying
to make the initial bootstrap kernel small enough to be able to
uncompress itself in 4MB.  That's the holdup here, and why it's
crashing on 4MB systems.

> 2) Using mfs to get a temporary file system for the installation kernel.

Well, this was Poul-Henning's opus and it works rather well, but
now that Poul has sort of gone on extended walkabout I don't know
of anyone else willing or able to revisit the issue of providing
alternatives.

> 3) 32K allocated for DMA bounce buffers, 512 bytes used.
> 4) 1K allocated for kernelname[], normally 8 bytes used.

Any comments, David?

All I can say is this:  If we can get things back to below the 4MB
boundry then that will be fine and dandy, but we WILL be back here
again.  We really need to get the dynamic device driver issue
on the road if we're to ever have any hope at all in running on
small memory machines for the forseeable future.  Perhaps one
or more of the last 4MB hold-outs will see necessity as the
mother of invention and start working on this? :)

					Jordan