Re: NetBSD/cobalt 5.1 restorecd

[Izumi Tsutsui <tsutsui%ceres.dti.ne.jp@localhost>]

[original message seems caught by filter due to html and UTF-8]

David Brownlee wrote:

> Excellent stuff :)
> 
> Is there any sense in unifying some of the x86 server images and having a
> general 'netbsd oddball port server' which would boot on an x86 pc and
> provider a network server for cobalt, dreamcast, sparc etc?

A unified image is technically interesting, but I doubt it's so useful.

- most users have only one client that needs a NFS server
  (geeks who have multiple clients should have a proper NetBSD server ;-)

- larger image takes more time to download and write to USB flash
  (~5 minutes to write 2GB image via rawrite32.exe)

- dreamcast requires a writable NFS root even after installation
  while cobalt only uses it for bootstrap installation (or emergency)

- for sparc, it requires client MAC address to serve bootloader via
  RARP (/etc/ethers) and TFTP (filename associated with client)
  so some more setup script is required
  (other clients also require machine specific bootstarp settings)

etc.

But probably it's time to think about "RestoreUSBflash" for cobalt...
(so I will no longer have to create coasters on debugging ;-)

---
Izumi Tsutsui