From owner-freebsd-current Sun Dec 6 17:52:34 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id RAA00626 for freebsd-current-outgoing; Sun, 6 Dec 1998 17:52:34 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from ocean.campus.luth.se (ocean.campus.luth.se [130.240.194.116]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id RAA00621 for ; Sun, 6 Dec 1998 17:52:32 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from karpen@ocean.campus.luth.se) Received: (from karpen@localhost) by ocean.campus.luth.se (8.9.1/8.9.1) id CAA13594; Mon, 7 Dec 1998 02:48:59 +0100 (CET) (envelope-from karpen) From: Mikael Karpberg Message-Id: <199812070148.CAA13594@ocean.campus.luth.se> Subject: Re: New drivers and install floppy space In-Reply-To: <199812060720.XAA02870@dingo.cdrom.com> from Mike Smith at "Dec 5, 98 11:20:17 pm" To: mike@smith.net.au (Mike Smith) Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 02:48:59 +0100 (CET) Cc: obrien@NUXI.com, jkh@zippy.cdrom.com, current@FreeBSD.ORG X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL32 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG According to Mike Smith: > > > When a majority can no longer be thusly accommodated, we'll just shrug > > > and ditch it completely in favor of the 2(*)-floppy solution. > > > > It is not that bad. I'm doing more and more boot off the CDROM installs. > > I assume sysinstall + boot kernel can be quite large there. > > Is the boot kernel there a full GENERIC kernel? > > No. The way that bootable CDROMs work is that the BIOS pretends that a > 1.44MB region at the beginning of the CDROM is actually a 1.44MB floppy > disk. > > I wouldn't mind finding the asshole responsible for this fiasco and > doing something traumatic to their lower digestive tract with a > petrol-powered Weed Eater. > > The only ways out of this are: > > - mandate a floppy in addition to the CDROM (sucks) > - add CDROM drivers to the bootloader (ATAPI, SCSI for Adaptec and NCR > at least) > > Both of these are painful. Less so than the Weed Eater, is my guess. :-) But... we have 1.44 MB on the CD... Since the bios manages to read the file, wouldn't there be a generic way that we could also read something from the CD? So that we could make a floppy which does a call and reads a 5 MB image from the CD, and unpacks the kernel with MFS from that, with full drivers and a nice splash image, too. :-) But, lemme guess: "Sorry... There's no way to fool the BIO to read the CD" ? /Mikael To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message