Andrei Petrov writes:
> Seems to me that the real win would be to use floppy based 
> root file system. You'll get your MINIROOTSIZE back as memory.
> That will be slow though.

How about a fdisk/disklabel floppy + a kernel/sysinst/root tarball
floppy?


Stage 0 floppy:
	INSTALL_BLAH kernel with minimum device support.
	sysinst with only fdisk/disklabel/mount/pax/etc
	(no networking on INSTALL_TINY)

Stage 1 tarball: (aka package?)
	INSTALL_BLAH or GENERIC_BLAH kernel, no ramdisk
	turns swap on immediately.
	full sysinst and "boot strapping binaries"
	full networking support.


The goal of stage 0 would be to fdisk, label, and make a disk bootable.
Then the root filesystem would be untarred, and the system should reboot
from the drive.

At this point stage 1 completes the installation via CD/nfs/ftp/http while
using swap and having no active ramdisk.

It would be easy enough to have a 4MB stage 0, a laptop stage 0, etc.
Then similar stage 1.  It would be possible to have a stage 0 that works
on most machines if it doesn't include cardbus and other less stable items.
Then a more machine specific stage 1 could be used.

-Andrew