From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Jan 20 16:04:30 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 79E0116A4CE for ; Tue, 20 Jan 2004 16:04:30 -0800 (PST) Received: from smtp1.adl2.internode.on.net (smtp1.adl2.internode.on.net [203.16.214.181]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0922243D45 for ; Tue, 20 Jan 2004 16:04:28 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from doconnor@gsoft.com.au) Received: from midget.dons.net.au (ppp104-192.lns1.adl1.internode.on.net [150.101.104.192])i0L03xxC000549; Wed, 21 Jan 2004 10:34:00 +1030 (CST) Received: from chowder.gsoft.com.au (root@localhost.dons.net.au [127.0.0.1]) by midget.dons.net.au (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id i0L03unY079801; Wed, 21 Jan 2004 10:33:56 +1030 (CST) (envelope-from doconnor@gsoft.com.au) From: "Daniel O'Connor" To: David Gilbert Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 10:33:54 +1030 User-Agent: KMail/1.5.4 References: <200401082334.i08NYMx86020@thistle.bogs.org> <200401091404.34083.doconnor@gsoft.com.au> <16397.14213.159522.188280@canoe.dclg.ca> In-Reply-To: <16397.14213.159522.188280@canoe.dclg.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200401211033.54893.doconnor@gsoft.com.au> X-Spam-Score: -5 () IN_REP_TO,QUOTED_EMAIL_TEXT,REFERENCES,SIGNATURE_SHORT_DENSE,SPAM_PHRASE_00_01,USER_AGENT,USER_AGENT_KMAIL X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang 2.26 (www . roaringpenguin . com / mimedefang) 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: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 00:04:30 -0000 On Wednesday 21 January 2004 00:43, David Gilbert wrote: > >> 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. True.. Although I believe the loader could do it just as well and it's already imported :) (It uses the BIOS to read the kernel, and groks PXE, although I am hazy on the specifics) -- Daniel O'Connor software and network engineer for Genesis Software - http://www.gsoft.com.au "The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from." -- Andrew Tanenbaum GPG Fingerprint - 9A8C 569F 685A D928 5140 AE4B 319B 41F4 5D17 FDD5