From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Jan 20 07:07:40 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B673316A4CE for ; Tue, 20 Jan 2004 07:07:40 -0800 (PST) Received: from sizone.org (mortar.sizone.org [65.126.154.242]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 55AF243D5F for ; Tue, 20 Jan 2004 07:06:37 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from dgilbert@daveg.ca) Received: by sizone.org (Postfix, from userid 66) id CB0FA30946; Tue, 20 Jan 2004 10:06:05 -0500 (EST) Received: by canoe.dclg.ca (Postfix, from userid 101) id 6E9161D1E8D; Tue, 20 Jan 2004 09:13:25 -0500 (EST) From: David Gilbert MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <16397.14213.159522.188280@canoe.dclg.ca> Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 09:13:25 -0500 To: "Daniel O'Connor" In-Reply-To: <200401091404.34083.doconnor@gsoft.com.au> References: <200401082334.i08NYMx86020@thistle.bogs.org> <200401091404.34083.doconnor@gsoft.com.au> X-Mailer: VM 7.17 under 21.4 (patch 14) "Reasonable Discussion" XEmacs Lucid cc: hackers@freebsd.org cc: Greg Shenaut Subject: Re: Discussion on the future of floppies in 5.x and 6.x X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 15:07:40 -0000 >>>>> "Daniel" == Daniel O'Connor writes: Daniel> On Friday 09 January 2004 10:04, Greg Shenaut wrote: >> In nuntio <20040108163724.GA26745@lpthe.jussieu.fr>, Michel TALON >> divulgat: >By the way, what's the reason that it is impossible to >> have just one >floppy which boots FreeBSD kernel, allows to see an >> unbootable cdrom >and continue installation from here? >> >> I agree. The boot floppy tries to do w a y too much. I think we >> should think of the boot floppy as way to implement an old-style >> console emulator: it "boots" and you tell it where to read the >> *real* boot image from. It should support all of the usual >> sources: CDs/DVDs, NFS mounts, FTP, and so on. Daniel> *How* does it support all of those sources? CD/DVD drives Daniel> need drivers (ATA optimisticly, but quite possibly SCSI), Daniel> FTP/NFS need network card support, NFS needs nfsclient.ko You're missing the solution. It's right in front of you. For network drivers, support PXE, RTL and etherboot. PXE even provides the UDP portion of a TCP stack. For disks, use BIOS. No seriously. BIOS support for cdroms and hard disks is still maintained as it's required to support windoze installs. AFAIK, too, one cdrom driver works for all the modern drives, too. In fact, FreeDOS might be an excellent bootstrap platform. Dave. -- ============================================================================ |David Gilbert, Independent Contractor. | Two things can only be | |Mail: dave@daveg.ca | equal if and only if they | |http://daveg.ca | are precisely opposite. | =========================================================GLO================