Subject: Re: Bare essentials...
To: David Woyciesjes <DAW@yalepress3.unipress.yale.edu>
From: Andrew Gillham <gillham@vaultron.com>
List: port-i386
Date: 02/01/2001 15:20:40
From: "David Woyciesjes" <DAW@yalepress3.unipress.yale.edu>:
> Yeah, a single floppy firewall option is nice. I saw something
> around on the net before, and I'm sure it's possible to do with
NetBSD.
> But I must say, I did need the extra space to add the PPPoE driver
> (for my ADSL line), and two other little bits for the firewall. It is
nice
> knowing I have the space, if I need it for some odd reason. I probably
could
> trim it down now that I got it running...

How about a single floppy with just the PPPoE drivers and ftp, then
it can mount_mfs /usr and pull down anything else it needs into RAM?
(probably less than 1MB of stuff compressed?)
This would happen on each reboot, but the same base floppy could
probably be used on almost any configuration. (with a high bandwidth
link)
Also, it could be set to pull the tarballs from a local machine rather
than off the net everytime.
You would have some of the advantages of netboot (minimal code on the
local media) only needing an ftp or http server available, inside or
outside wouldn't necessarily matter.

After all how often does a NetBSD box need to be rebooted?
(hint: http://www.uptimes.net/)

-Andrew