On Tue, 3 Oct 2000, Andrew Gillham wrote:

> 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
> 

Uh, cool, I didn't think that far:-). That  guy asked to boot.
--
	Andrey