From owner-freebsd-small Fri Jun 18 4:29:57 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-small@freebsd.org Received: from mail.mugnolo.com (ns.mugnolo.com [209.133.83.160]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id AC1DA14F95 for ; Fri, 18 Jun 1999 04:29:54 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from adrian@mugnolo.com) Received: from pulpo (ppp22.dialup1.fibertel.com.ar [24.232.8.22] (may be forged)) by mail.mugnolo.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id EAA18901 for ; Fri, 18 Jun 1999 04:29:50 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <000101beb97d$e2330e80$0100a8c0@pulpo> From: "Adrian Mugnolo" To: Subject: Q: Minimal floppy mounted (rw) FreeBSD for SAH client Date: Fri, 18 Jun 1999 08:29:45 -0300 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.72.3110.1 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.3110.3 Sender: owner-freebsd-small@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Hello, I want to build a minimal, floppy based (rw), FreeBSD setup for running SETI@home's client. These are the features I need from it: 1) Can be one or two floppies. I would really like to understand the "magic" behind FreeBSD distribuition's standard "mfsroot" disk. I would like to know how to just replace it for example. 2) Must be able to recognize most PCI network cards. I plan to use a bunch of powerful desktop PCs (most Pentium IIs and IIIs) to contribute some good CPU power to the SAH project. They usually have at least four different NIC types (Intel, 3Com, TI). Windoze screensaver client is a tort(ure|oise) running so I would like to have a massive BSD installation without using hard disk storage (I will be using them at night). This will help with SAH's OS statistics too... ;-) 3) Must be able to get a DHCP address lease so it should have the BPF driver compiled in. I don't want to maintain individual rc files ("laziness is a virtue", Larry Wall dixit). 4) Must be able to store files in the floppy drive. A typical SAH directory requires 481 KB of storage for the working unit data and status files altogether. I don't want to loose a 90% finished working unit when someone presses [control+alt+delete]. 5) Doesn't really need init, neither users, neither multiuser mode, neither command shell. I can think in the following startup sequence: [power on] [boot kernel] dhclient setiathome [power off] I know this can be done. I know how to build such kernel and the tools (this "init" replacement, for example) but how to fit them on floppies, hmmm?... I have been using FreeBSD for a couple if years now. In all this time I couldn't find really good, simple, straight forward documentation on the bootdisk process. I wish [flame mode off] building a custom bootable kernel was as simple as LINUX's "make zdisk"... :-) BTW, is PicoBSD the shortest path for this minimal requirement? TIA. Regards, -AM To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-small" in the body of the message