Floppies for ALPHA

[Ruslan Ermilov]

On Tue, Jul 29, 2003 at 06:43:26PM -0700, David O'Brien wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 29, 2003 at 11:21:50PM +0300, Ruslan Ermilov wrote:
> > On Tue, Jul 29, 2003 at 12:54:49PM -0700, David O'Brien wrote:
> > > On Tue, Jul 29, 2003 at 10:23:43PM +0300, Ruslan Ermilov wrote:
> > > > > Other than that I think the patch does what you intend it to do.
> > > > > 
> > > > Thanks, it sure does.  :-)
> > > > But does that also mean that you'd feel comfortable if I committed
> > > > it now?
> > > 
> > > Not as posted.  As I mentioned, the patch does too much.  Can you post a
> > > new patch that produces a single 8MB MFSBOOT "floppy" image?
> > > 
> > MFSBOOT?  This is something new.  :-)
> > 
> > I guess you mean the current boot.flp by it, right?  If yes,
> > I can't see a point in having it, so please explain.  How it
> > could be used?
> > 
> > For sparc64, boot.flp is useful, beause "you can dd it to a disk
> > from solaris and then boot off it to install", according to
> > Jake.  Can the same be made on Alpha?
> 
> Yes it can.  MFSROOT(BOOT) what ever you want to call it.  I.e., / is not
> the hard disk you want to install on -- thus it has to be RAM disk so the
> real hard disk device isn't opened.
> 
Please provide a real-world scenario how this image could be
used.  The contents of MFS root floppy does *NOT* have a
kernel, and just increasing its size to say 10M won't do
the trick.

> > The idea is to have a miniboot.iso that just resembles the
> > contents of the boot.flp, but can be used to boot off the
> > CD-ROM (and then do an FTP installation, for example).
> 
> NO!  The idea is to have an image that has / as a memory file system,
> that has a full GENERIC kernel *and* has a full set of modules *and* has
> sysinstall as /sbin/init.
> 
How such an image can be used on Alpha?  (This is what miniboot.iso
will look like, and I think we can even generate both ISO image
and floppy image from it, but I just cannot understand how the
latter can be used on Alpha, please answer the question above.)

Can anyone else out there please explian what David wants, as
I just cannot understand it, despite trying really hard?


Cheers,
-- 
Ruslan Ermilov		Sysadmin and DBA,
ru at sunbay.com		Sunbay Software Ltd,
ru at FreeBSD.org		FreeBSD committer
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