AMD64 boot floppies

[John Baldwin]

On Tuesday 03 January 2006 12:19 pm, Scott Long wrote:
> Markus Trippelsdorf wrote:
> > 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/floppie
> >>>>>>>s/
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>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.
>
> I'll happily accept patches from anyone who is interested in turning
> floppy support back on for amd64.  I'm not rejecting the idea, I'm just
> saying that it might have some risks, and the overall long-term future
> is murky.

Should be pretty simple actually (untested):

Index: Makefile
===================================================================
RCS file: /usr/cvs/src/release/Makefile,v
retrieving revision 1.895
diff -u -r1.895 Makefile
--- Makefile    2 Jan 2006 13:29:58 -0000       1.895
+++ Makefile    3 Jan 2006 18:05:12 -0000
@@ -219,6 +219,12 @@
 MFSLABEL=              auto
 SEPARATE_LIVEFS=
 .elif ${TARGET_ARCH} == "amd64"
+MAKE_FLOPPIES=         true
+FLOPPYSIZE=            1440
+FLOPPYSPLITSIZE=       1392
+FLOPPYINODE=           40000
+FLOPPYLABEL=           fd1440
+BOOTINODE=             80000
 MFSSIZE=               4096
 MFSINODE=              8192
 MFSLABEL=              auto

-- 
John Baldwin <jhb at FreeBSD.org>  <><  http://www.FreeBSD.org/~jhb/
"Power Users Use the Power to Serve"  =  http://www.FreeBSD.org