> From: David Brownlee <abs@netbsd.org>
>
> 	Can you boot a compressed kernel from floppy and then run from
> 	IDE?

Yes, this works just fine. You can boot a kernel that has "root on <whatever>"
and swap is always a runtime item these days. You can boot a `root on ?'
kernel this way if you are willing to interactively boot it.

I believe that for a few months now, GENERIC has been too big to fit on a
single floppy, so you have to either use multiple floppies (so, no unattended
reboots) or make a smaller custom kernel.

There are two different ways to do it: set up the floppy as ustarfs (the only
way for multiple volumes) or set it up as ffs. An ffs floppy is a bit easier
to deal with, you can newfs it, mount it, cp to it.  ustarfs volumes have
some volume-number-verification labels that are presently sort of "handmade"
with dd(1). See src/distrib/alpha for examples.

And yes, linux can boot from ARC, but only on certain models, generally
very old ones. It works by replacing the ARC console with a thing containing
an old version of palcode that does most of the things that the "real"
palcode in SRM does. For the most part, SRM is available, and on lots of
platforms linux does in fact require SRM. So, the incremental benefit to
NetBSD of ARC booting on a handful of (mostly very old) platforms that have
SRM available (perhaps not in every case) is small. Still, it's too bad,
and I am sorry for the difficulties for those owners.

Upgrading SRM on a Multia will not enable it to boot from the IDE channel.

Speaking of features .. I would rather have an X server than an ARC booter.
We had some volunteer pledges for this, finally .. any progress to report?

	ross