Subject: Re: i386 install media status ?
To: Steven M. Bellovin <smb@cs.columbia.edu>
From: Manuel Bouyer <bouyer@antioche.eu.org>
List: port-i386
Date: 11/29/2006 10:06:52
On Wed, Nov 29, 2006 at 12:17:06AM +0000, David Laight wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 28, 2006 at 05:06:17PM -0500, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
> > On Tue, 28 Nov 2006 22:59:04 +0100
> > Pavel Cahyna <pavel@NetBSD.org> wrote:
> > 
> > 
> > > Are we afraid of BIOSes which can't
> > > boot from "no emulation" bootable CDs and require the "emulated
> > > floppy" method?
> > > 
> > That's the argument that's been used in the past.
> 
> I'd also suggest that there may be old systems that won't boot with
> the acpi kernel,

boot -c
disable acpi
disable ioapic
quit

> or need support for old devices.  In both cases its
> seems sane to keep a sub 2.8MB install kernel+ramdisk.

Isn't what INSTALL_SMALL is for ?

> 
> This means that the acpi install kernel can probaly lose support for 
> EISA devices and ISA network/scsi cards.
> 
> The non-acpi install will also be easier to cut down for really small
> systems.
> 
> Also if we are doing a non-floppy-emualtion image - even one that

That's my question too. Can we, actually, select different kernels
when booting on CD ? System requiring ACPI are likely to be floppyless,
so booting from a different floppy set isn't an option for theses.
An ACPI kernel really needs to be available from CD.

-- 
Manuel Bouyer <bouyer@antioche.eu.org>
     NetBSD: 26 ans d'experience feront toujours la difference
--