Re: i386 GENERIC+miniroot vs amd64 INSTALL kernels

[Steven Bellovin <smb%cs.columbia.edu@localhost>]

On Jan 1, 2011, at 11:51 53AM, Martin Husemann wrote:

> On Sat, Jan 01, 2011 at 04:30:48PM +0100, Jean-Yves Migeon wrote:
>> What about INSTALL kernels?
> 
> Well, that is an orthogonal issue. Sparc64 provides INSTALL (with md
> internal miniroot) and CD images with GENERIC as kernel.
> 
> Since there are only very few kernels build, it is no big deal to keep
> INSTALL.
> 
>> Back then, downloading and starting an installation was quite
>> straightforward. Now, you need to have GENERIC + download miniroot.kmod
>> installation module, "load /miniroot.kmod" in bootloader, which is not
>> necessarily as trivial -- is it a voluntary change (and just needs
>> documentation to reflect the state), or just an oversight?
> 
> Yes, it is a more convenient (some people say "a lot", but maybe the 
> difference
> is more the missing documentation, I don't realy know).
> But i386 number of kernels exploded, and INSTALL was an easy one to kill.
> I personally see no reason for other ports to follow this move w/o compelling
> reason.

From the outside, I had assumed there were two other reasons: the easy ability
to increase the functionality of the install system (more commands, more
powerful shell -- can I be the only one who misses command-line editing in
the install subsystem? -- without being limited by RAM size, better installation
on small-RAM machines, and -- perhaps most important -- as a step towards
easy live CDs.

                --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb