AMD64 boot floppies

[Markus Trippelsdorf]

On Tue, Jan 03, 2006 at 01:06:24PM -0500, John Baldwin wrote:
> 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
> 
...
Making the kernel boot floppies...
sh /usr/src/release/scripts/split-file.sh /R/stage/kernels/kernel.gz
/R/stage/floppyset/kern  "Kernel"
+ FILE=/R/stage/kernels/kernel.gz
+ shift
+ DEST=/R/stage/floppyset/kern
+ shift
+ CHUNK_SIZE=Kernel
+ shift
+ DESCR=
+ shift
shift: can't shift that many
*** Error code 2

Stop in /usr/src/release.
*** Error code 1

-- 
Markus