From owner-freebsd-hackers Sun Feb 1 17:27:20 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id RAA11797 for hackers-outgoing; Sun, 1 Feb 1998 17:27:20 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from word.smith.net.au (ppp11.portal.net.au [202.12.71.111]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id RAA11739 for ; Sun, 1 Feb 1998 17:26:32 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from mike@word.smith.net.au) Received: from word (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by word.smith.net.au (8.8.8/8.8.5) with ESMTP id LAA00856; Mon, 2 Feb 1998 11:49:10 +1030 (CST) Message-Id: <199802020119.LAA00856@word.smith.net.au> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.0zeta 7/24/97 To: ade@demon.net cc: Mike Smith , hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: boot floppy banner In-reply-to: Your message of "Sun, 01 Feb 1998 19:16:42 MDT." Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Mon, 02 Feb 1998 11:49:09 +1030 From: Mike Smith Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG X-To-Unsubscribe: mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org "unsubscribe hackers" > Mike Smith writes: > > > >This loses in the case where there is no boot.banner message. Help is > >not displayed by default anymore, and there is no way to determine that > >you need to type said command. > > Unfortunately, I've yet to find a way to do this without making the > resulting binary too big -- 300 bytes isn't an awful lot to play > around with :) Hmm, if you want to save space, try removing the bad144 stuff. It wastes a great deal of space for almost zero functionality. > I understand the problem with not having a "type 'help'" tag somewhere > in the boot loader itself, but is the situation where we don't > have a boot.banner (and thus no indication of how to get help) such > a major issue? After all, we can ensure that a boot.banner will be > present after an initial system install. Should the end-user then > go and delete boot.banner, is it not reasonable to assume that they're > "advanced" in that they'll remember to be able to type 'help' at > the boot prompt? (assuming of course that they haven't trashed > boot.text as well :) You are suggesting that if boot.banner is not found, boot.help is displayed by default? That's not unreasonable. > This is all horribly reminisicent of spending days, data sheets in > hand, trying to shave just that one extra cycle out of code, trying > to make it fit into horribly small eeproms for embedded systems, > many moons ago. Heh. I've just escaped that one too. 8) -- \\ Sometimes you're ahead, \\ Mike Smith \\ sometimes you're behind. \\ mike@smith.net.au \\ The race is long, and in the \\ msmith@freebsd.org \\ end it's only with yourself. \\