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Date:      Sun, 6 Dec 1998 11:20:02 +0200 (SAT)
From:      Robert Nordier <rnordier@nordier.com>
To:        mike@smith.net.au (Mike Smith)
Cc:        jkh@zippy.cdrom.com, mike@smith.net.au, wilko@yedi.iaf.nl, wpaul@skynet.ctr.columbia.edu, current@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: New drivers and install floppy space
Message-ID:  <199812060920.LAA18560@ceia.nordier.com>
In-Reply-To: <199812060655.WAA02653@dingo.cdrom.com> from Mike Smith at "Dec 5, 98 10:55:36 pm"

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Mike Smith wrote:
 
> It shouldn't really require MFS_ROOT turned on (the foo_ROOT options 
> are IMO bogus); it should always be checking for an mfs_root type 
> object.  But no, the mfsroot image should indeed be either a UFS 
> filesystem or a FAT filesystem (the latter would make adding extra 
> drivers to the disk easier).
> 
> > Hmmmmm.  For that matter, we could make sure that the mfsroot was also
> > a bootable floppy image with a /boot/boot.4th file on it which said:
> >
> >        : yell 7 emit ." NO, BOOT THE OTHER FLOPPY, YOU KNOB!" cr ;
> > 
> >        yell
> >        key drop
> >        reset
> > 
> > Or something to that effect. :-)
> 
> That's an excellent argument for making it a UFS floppy, yes.  Either 
> that, or ask Robert for a bootsector that says the same thing...

FWIW, there's existing i386 code to do this in newfs_msdos.c.  Just
change the message displayed.

I can always oblige with a FAT filesystem bootstrap, if we want to
use FAT floppies.  Because of a lower metadata overhead, FAT could
be a lot more space-efficient than UFS.

We can lose 90% of UFS's 16K for boot + superblock, for instance.
And FAT dirents are only 32 bytes.

-- 
Robert Nordier

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