From owner-freebsd-current Fri Feb 28 8:12:25 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 756EA37B401; Fri, 28 Feb 2003 08:12:24 -0800 (PST) Received: from stork.mail.pas.earthlink.net (stork.mail.pas.earthlink.net [207.217.120.188]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BC85143F75; Fri, 28 Feb 2003 08:12:23 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from tlambert2@mindspring.com) Received: from pool0037.cvx21-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net ([209.179.192.37] helo=mindspring.com) by stork.mail.pas.earthlink.net with asmtp (SSLv3:RC4-MD5:128) (Exim 3.33 #1) id 18on7W-0005It-00; Fri, 28 Feb 2003 08:12:23 -0800 Message-ID: <3E5F8A11.81E4726B@mindspring.com> Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2003 08:10:57 -0800 From: Terry Lambert X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.79 [en] (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: John Baldwin Cc: Ruslan Ermilov , Geoffrey , current@FreeBSD.ORG, Garance A Drosihn , David Schultz Subject: Re: Any ideas why we can't even boot a i386 ? References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-ELNK-Trace: b1a02af9316fbb217a47c185c03b154d40683398e744b8a4c34924705fb5407d2d022b9c442e9c3793caf27dac41a8fd350badd9bab72f9c350badd9bab72f9c 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 John Baldwin wrote: > Or you can use PXE at your provisioning center and have the > BIOS setup to boot from the hard disk first, which will fail > for the initial boot and fall back to PXE. Then once the box > is installed you ship it to its destination. This is a possibility; however, there are a number of system failure scenarios that make this undesirable. Specifically, it's desirable to support the idea of a fallback boot (e.g. "nextboot") for a partially functional system, to downgrade it automatically, and make it at least something other than a doorstop on which one has to pay international shipping. In your scenario, there's no possible reupgrade method. I understand that FreeBSD doesn't have a built-in graceful fallback mechanism, and that appliance vendors have had to, traditionally, "roll their own", but, for example, the Whistle InterJet had a fairly marvelous fallback mechanism, which did work really well, as long as you didn't try to do version insertion (that's a middle management problem, not a technical one). > We just launched a closed-box appliance yesterday. Actually, > it's going live to actual customers in about an hour and a > half, but I digress. :) You should shout it to the world... at least post a press release to -advocacy! -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message