From owner-freebsd-current Thu Feb 27 12:56:58 2003 Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3C2CC37B401; Thu, 27 Feb 2003 12:56:56 -0800 (PST) Received: from magic.adaptec.com (magic-mail.adaptec.com [208.236.45.100]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4252E43F85; Thu, 27 Feb 2003 12:56:55 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from scott_long@btc.adaptec.com) Received: from redfish.adaptec.com (redfish.adaptec.com [162.62.50.11]) by magic.adaptec.com (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id h1RKu2F31448; Thu, 27 Feb 2003 12:56:02 -0800 Received: from btc.btc.adaptec.com (btc.btc.adaptec.com [10.100.0.52]) by redfish.adaptec.com (8.8.8+Sun/8.8.8) with ESMTP id MAA29605; Thu, 27 Feb 2003 12:56:41 -0800 (PST) Received: from btc.adaptec.com (hollin [10.100.253.56]) by btc.btc.adaptec.com (8.8.8+Sun/8.8.8) with ESMTP id NAA11605; Thu, 27 Feb 2003 13:56:38 -0700 (MST) Message-ID: <3E5E7AF6.5060506@btc.adaptec.com> Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2003 13:54:14 -0700 From: Scott Long User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.2b) Gecko/20021216 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Garance A Drosihn Cc: Ruslan Ermilov , Geoffrey , current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Any ideas why we can't even boot a i386 ? References: <20030227042706.A67762@FreeBSD.org> <20030227052926.G28626-100000@iguana.reptiles.org> <20030227112755.GC39346@sunbay.com> In-Reply-To: <20030227042706.A67762@FreeBSD.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Garance A Drosihn wrote: > At 1:27 PM +0200 2/27/03, Ruslan Ermilov wrote: > > > : RCS file: /home/ncvs/src/sys/i386/conf/GENERIC,v > > : Working file: GENERIC > > : description: > > : ---------------------------- > > : revision 1.296 > > : date: 2001/01/14 10:11:10; author: jhb; state: Exp; lines: +2 -2 > > : > > : Remove I386_CPU from GENERIC. Support for the 386 seriously > > : pessimizes performance on other x86 processors. Custom kernels > > : can still be built that will run on the 386. > > > While there was good reason for removing i386 from GENERIC, that > does mean that someone "just wanting to try freebsd" on a i386 > may very well give up before realizing that it does (hopefully!) > work. > > For official release CDs, should we also provide a GENERIC_I386 > kernel, so the person can get up-and-running without having to > first build a new kernel? Or will they just run into other > problems once they get past the kernel, due to everything else > in the system being compiled for i486 & newer? > > I think we (developers) get a little too used to having multiple > machines around, and assume that everyone who might want to test > freebsd will have some hardware that works for the GENERIC kernel, > and which they can use to first do a buildkernel for the hardware > they really want to test freebsd on. > > I'm thinking maybe the 5.x release CD's should include: > GENERIC > GENERIC +SMP > GENERIC +VMWARE-friendly settings > GENERIC for i386 > > Would that add too much extra work for a 5.x release? > I'd be happy to add this kind of stuff to 5.x, but the real hurdle is doing the work to make it happen. It would be nice to be able to select the kernel that you want from the bootloader of the CD, though this probably isn't terribly important. I doubt that many i386-vintage systems understand non-emulated El Torito, so you'd have to roll install floppies also. Another idea for a 'custom GENERIC' is a 'low memory/i386' version that removes all of the PCI devices and other things not likely to run or exist on an i386. Anyways, patches are welcome! Scott To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message