From owner-freebsd-hackers Thu Sep 18 04:28:08 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id EAA29594 for hackers-outgoing; Thu, 18 Sep 1997 04:28:08 -0700 (PDT) Received: from word.smith.net.au (ppp20.portal.net.au [202.12.71.120]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id EAA29549 for ; Thu, 18 Sep 1997 04:27:40 -0700 (PDT) Received: from word.smith.net.au (localhost.smith.net.au [127.0.0.1]) by word.smith.net.au (8.8.7/8.8.5) with ESMTP id UAA00465; Thu, 18 Sep 1997 20:54:01 +0930 (CST) Message-Id: <199709181124.UAA00465@word.smith.net.au> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.0zeta 7/24/97 To: nik@iii.co.uk cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Different kernels for the bindist and boot.flp? In-reply-to: Your message of "Thu, 18 Sep 1997 12:12:46 +0100." <19970918121246.52480@strand.iii.co.uk> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Thu, 18 Sep 1997 20:53:59 +0930 From: Mike Smith Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > > Ah. Does this mean that boot.flp from a current snapshot will recognise > an IDE ZIP drive at boot time (modulo any user solvable constraints like > "There must be a disk in the drive"), and let the user use it as a UFS or > DOS disk? Yes, and specifically yes, you must have a disk in and leave it in. Removing it will make Bad Things happen. > But there is also the more general problem of integrating a custom built > kernel into the rest of the installation mechanism right from the start. > Including dropping the correct kernel into /kernel. Of course, this might > turn into a bit of a no-brainer as well. No, it's actually quite hard. Due to the way the boot floppy works, you have to build a custom image with your new kernel, and then hack sysinstall to splat a new kernel image down after it's extracted the bindist. You could alternatively specify a different kernel to go in the bindist, which is relatively straightforward but slow (you have to build a release to do it). > > OTOH, it _is_ a great learning experience, and if nothing else you may > > well come out of it with some suggestions that'll make it easier for > > the next novice, so don't take this as any sort of discouragement. > > Yep. I'll be doing the install (possibly several times) later today, and > plan to write up anything out of the ordinary I need to do. Of course, it's > entirely possible that it all just works. Oh, I meant hacking the release code 8) mike