From owner-freebsd-hackers Mon Mar 31 03:54:30 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id DAA12323 for hackers-outgoing; Mon, 31 Mar 1997 03:54:30 -0800 (PST) Received: from minor.stranger.com (stranger.vip.best.com [204.156.129.250]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id DAA12318 for ; Mon, 31 Mar 1997 03:54:26 -0800 (PST) Received: from dog.farm.org (dog.farm.org [207.111.140.47]) by minor.stranger.com (8.6.12/8.6.12) with ESMTP id DAA26710; Mon, 31 Mar 1997 03:53:11 -0800 Received: (from dk@localhost) by dog.farm.org (8.7.5/dk#3) id DAA06808; Mon, 31 Mar 1997 03:46:39 -0800 (PST) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 1997 03:46:39 -0800 (PST) From: Dmitry Kohmanyuk Message-Id: <199703311146.DAA06808@dog.farm.org> To: adrian@obiwan.aceonline.com.au (Adrian Chadd) Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Small Disk Xterminal Newsgroups: cs-monolit.gated.lists.freebsd.hackers Organization: FARM Computing Association Reply-To: dk+@ua.net X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk In article you wrote: > On Thu, 27 Mar 1997, Joe Greco wrote: > > I have a not-very-polished set of tools that allows me to build a floppy > > disk (1.44MB) that contains a minimal (MINIMAL) FreeBSD configuration on > > an MFS filesystem. This is potentially very handy for things like small > > routers, terminal servers, etc. It is ALSO useful to build a minimal > > Xterminal (although the Xterminal requires an -ro NFS mount from > > someplace). > > > Why? > What other programs would the straight X server need? Could you fit them > compressed onto a 1.44mb floppy? I don't think that even a compressed server itself can fit into 1.44 floppy. see: dog:/usr/X11/bin# gzip -9 < XF86_S3 | wc 3697 22451 1050627 and we still have to put kernel there... (not saying about sh, init, etc.) > I was thinking of booting off a floppy disk, and "netbooting" (kinda), by > getting what was needed, placing it into a minimal ramdisk on the machine, > and then running totally diskless. or, get some DOSish tftp client which can unzip dosboot into RAM disk using a packet driver... seems to be not so hard? It should be even possible to write/find a standalone RAM disk and tftp programs for real mode, without using that M$-written non-reentrant interrupt handler mistaken for the operating system... there are emx and djgpp to compile the code with. I already have a public domain bootsector for FAT filesystem ;-) Oh well, this only have to be a single program, using packet driver to tftp the kernel and then load it properly (using netboot as a reference implementation, but maybe doing it more cleanly). Even better, it can be used to tftp the standard secondary-stage bootblock which would then load the kernel itself... hmm. Of course, Terry's idea of modular kernel with fallback drivers using vm86 is cleaner. > Yes, RAM is so relatively cheap you wouldn't really have problems with it. > I know of xterms with 4 and 8mb RAM that run just fine when netbooted. you probably mean `hardware' xterms (running their own OS)? btw, I have NCD 88k, and it's boot image is 2.5M, including TCP networking (BSD-derived, according to copyright), local WM, and telnet, nifty setup, and NFS- or tftp-based font access. Oh well, and it even does LAT and VMS pathnames ;-) and Xremote and who-knows-what else... All that on a RISC CPU... -- What do you mean you've never been to Alpha Centauri? - Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz (THHGTTG)