From owner-freebsd-hackers  Sat Jan 31 20:33:37 1998
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To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>
Cc: Andrzej Bialecki <abial@nask.pl>, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG,
        yokota@zodiac.mech.utsunomiya-u.ac.jp
Subject: Re: boot floppy banner 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sat, 31 Jan 1998 08:47:58 PST."
             <4667.886265278@time.cdrom.com> 
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Date: Sun, 01 Feb 1998 13:40:31 +0900
From: Kazutaka YOKOTA <yokota@zodiac.mech.utsunomiya-u.ac.jp>
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>> OTOH, this version is much better than previous one... so at least we're
>> heading in good direction :-))
>
>I believe the goal behind the current message was to eliminate all
>those novice users saying "how do I boot off the 1st drive on my 2nd
>controller?" - the information presented there may be cryptic, but
>it's also pretty useful if you're totally lost as to what your device
>name should be or how you can specify the partition and bios logical
>drive# independently.  "Hello, and welcome to FreeBSD!"  is certainly
>more friendly, but does very little to actually aid the user. :-)
>
>					Jordan

Well, I am not suggesting to replace every copy of boot.help on the
hard drives.  I am only proposing that boot.help on the "boot.flp" to
be less cryptic.

When you are installing FreeBSD for the first time, you don't have any
bootable FreeBSD partition on any hard disk! The boot floppy is the 
only bootable FreeBSD system.

I agree that the current help message should be displayed once the
system is installed.

If the user is upgrading, there is a bootable FreeBSD partition on the
hard drive. But, what he wants is to start the installer on the boot
floppy in this case too, isn't it?  If he wants to boot the system
from the existing partition, why on earth he sticks the boot floppy in
the floppy drive?

Kazu