> Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 13:05:14 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Curt Sampson <cjs@portal.ca>

> On Tue, 20 May 1997, Matthias Drochner wrote:
> 
> > a) Use BOOTP/TFTP instead of RARP/BOOTPARAM/NFS. This is
> >   a bit smaller. It requires more efforts at the server, since the kernel
> >   additionally needs rarp and bootparam. I hope this will change.
> 
> This seems a reasonable move to me, since we now have machines (the
> new OpenFirmware ones, I gather) that do bootp in the boot proms,
> and can't do RARP in the second stage boot without downloading a
> full set of drivers and autoprobe routines.
> 
> What was holding us back so far, of course, was the fact that bootp
> has no way to specify a swap file (which bootparams does). However,
> I gather that with Matt's new swap code the kernel itself doesn't
> need to get the swap path any more, so this move may now be practical.

Yes, it will be nice to have swap become optional.  However...

There was another thing holding back a BOOTP version of nfs_boot.c:
The network stack used to make it difficult to send and receive UDP
packets when you do not yet have an interface address.  I'm not sure
if this is still a problem.  (have not looked lately)