Subject: Re: one stop towards install CDs
To: David Brownlee <abs@NetBSD.org>
From: Hubert Feyrer <hubert@feyrer.de>
List: tech-install
Date: 02/16/2006 10:57:58
On Thu, 16 Feb 2006, David Brownlee wrote:
> 	The other variant on this is to use kloader(4) to directly boot a
> 	kernel from the installed system once you get that far...

kwhat?
No. The other variant is to put a really stock kernel on the CD and have 
the bootloader tell it to get its root filesystem from the CD, and then 
use that just like a ramdisk.

Which is all fine and works, but not really what I'm interested in in the 
short run. Changing our floppies to be kernel+ramdisk is ways easier, see
the framework I posted at 
http://mail-index.netbsd.org/tech-install/2006/02/11/0003.html

I've also spent some more thoughts on the whole issue WRT src/etc's 
iso-image target and src/distrib/cdrom, and a merging of that and what's 
in (or what may get into) src/distrib/$MACHINE would be useful.

My current theory is that NetBSD needs to split the concept of building a 
"release" into #1 the compiling of all the stuff in $RELEASEDIR (which 
includes small, kernel-only floppy and CD images just as I proposed, and 
#2 the postprocessing (creating a bootable CD *with* install sets, taring 
up sources, and making sure there's a pkgsrc snapshot there, too). Maybe 
the source taring-up should even be moved to another step #3 that's only 
done after performing step #2 *all* platforms.

We'll see when I find more time for this, or maybe if someone picks it 
up...


  - Hubert