Date: Tue, 3 Jan 2006 18:14:58 +0100 From: Markus Trippelsdorf <markus@trippelsdorf.de> To: Scott Long <scottl@samsco.org> Cc: freebsd-amd64@freebsd.org Subject: Re: AMD64 boot floppies Message-ID: <20060103171458.GA688@bsd.trippelsdorf.de> In-Reply-To: <43BA9E3F.50505@samsco.org> References: <200512301245.57820.andrea@brancatelli.it> <20051230130529.GK52756@ip.net.ua> <200512300834.51959.jhb@freebsd.org> <20060103040049.GA54882@dragon.NUXI.org> <20060103130320.GA691@bsd.trippelsdorf.de> <43BA9E3F.50505@samsco.org>
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On Tue, Jan 03, 2006 at 08:54:39AM -0700, Scott Long wrote: > Markus Trippelsdorf wrote: > > >On Mon, Jan 02, 2006 at 08:00:49PM -0800, David O'Brien wrote: > > > >>On Fri, Dec 30, 2005 at 08:34:50AM -0500, John Baldwin wrote: > >> > >>>On Friday 30 December 2005 08:05 am, Ruslan Ermilov wrote: > >>> > >>>>On Fri, Dec 30, 2005 at 12:45:57PM +0100, Andrea Brancatelli wrote: > >>>> > >>>>>For i386 we have > >>>>>ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/i386/6.0-RELEASE/floppies/ > >>>>>but for Amd64 there's no > >>>>>ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/amd64/6.0-RELEASE/floppies/ > >>>>> > >>>>>How can I get installation floppies for 6.0 / amd64? > >>>> > >>>>http://www.freebsd.org/releases/6.0R/installation-amd64.html#FLOPPIES > >>> > >>>FYI, it would be trivial to support with the splitfs stuff now. You'd > >>>basically just need to copy over the variables from i386 to set the > >>>sizes, etc. > >> > >>please, Please, PLEASE no... why add the pain of floppies to the release > >>mix when no one in their right mind as an AMD64 machine that has a floppy > >>drive AND doesn't have a CDROM (or DVD) drive. > > > > > >But I guess, the are many AMD64 machines that don't have a CDROM- or > >DVD- burner build in. For these machines a few floppy images to start a > >network installation would be helpful. > > > > My impression was the floppy drives are disappearing from servers faster > than CDROM drives are. It's certainly possible to start generating > floppies for amd64, but that has not been done in a very long time, so > it could turn into a big mess of unknown bugs. Also, we will eventually > move to a new installer, one that cannot easily fit onto floppies. That > day might not happen today or tomorrow, but it will happen sometime. > Most server systems these days do support PXE booting, and that can > actually be more convenient than floppies if handled correctly. Just an example: When I upgraded my old Celeron box a year ago, I had to buy a CDROM burner, so that I could burn the install CD for my new machine. Since than it is sitting idle in its slot. Had a floppy image been available at that time, it would have saved me the ~30 Euro for the burner. BTW, all other main BSD variants offer floppy images for the AMD64 architecture. -- Markus
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