Advice on 2.88MB FDDs; can't e-mail

[Bruce A. Mah]

If memory serves me right, Craig Carey wrote:

> I recommend that the "boot.flp" file be deleted. Thanks. Otherwise
> it provides a hope that it is possible to install FreeBSD
> successfully (at least once some ancient, or commonplace) piece of
> hardware is obtained.

I don't think that 2.88MB floppy disks were ever common, and I don't
think there was ever the implication that you needed one to install
FreeBSD.  I'm not sure if I really understand your point.

As for getting rid of boot.flp:

For 4.X, we need boot.flp as a part of the release process because the
data in this file is needed for a bootable CD-ROM (on the i386
anyways, don't know about alpha).  Basically, the computer thinks that
it's booting a 2.88MB floppy disk.

For FreeBSD 5.X, we do "no-emulation" bootable CD-ROMs.  They boot a
full generic kernel from the CD-ROM, and the bootstrap loader pulls in
a filesystem image containing the installation program and supporting
utilities.  Technically, I suppose that boot.flp isn't needed in this
scenario, but it's not hurting anything.  We're not losing that much
disk space by including it.

Bruce.
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