Hi,

I've recently tweaked some code and I've managed to get the i386 to
boot from an "ustar" image.  This is done in much the same way as on
the alpha port, and the main benefit is that we can now use more than
one floppy for the installation system, as the "ustar" format has
multi-volume support.  Another benefit is that the "ustar" format is
more compact than the ffs format, so if you re-add the "strip" command
to the build of netbsd.ram.gz, the code may still fit on a single
"ustar" floppy while the "ffs" floppy image will by now overflow.  The
code to support this is now in the tree and should appear in
tomorrow's SUP update, and the make setup to build the images can then
be found in

	/usr/src/distrib/i386/floppies/fdset*

The new images will so far not be built by default.

I've also added the 'ex' driver to the INSTALL kernel config file
(accidentally left out, I discovered it the other day when we wanted
to install the Dec 7 snapshot on a Dell machine with a 3c905B on-board
chip as the only ethernet interface), and I've put a pair of disk
images with the resulting new kernel up for ftp at

	ftp://ftp.ntnu.no/pub/NetBSD/arch/i386/boot-19981219/*

Please try these out and give feedback -- the code has not had as much
testing as I would have liked, although I have booted both the new
ustar-format images and the old-style ffs images with the new boot
code, and both still worked fine on my test machine (both booted up
and sysinst started).  Besides, this is my last day at the office
before the new year and I was hoping this could be a suitable
Christmas (or whatever) present for you all. ;-)

The kernel and sysinst code on the floppy pair is as for the last
snapshot I put out, i.e. 7 Dec, except for the changes required
to support "ustar" boot images.

Regards,

- H=E5vard