On Sun, 6 Oct 2002 Robertdkeys@aol.com wrote:

> So, for the sake of discussion, what is needed to add, down in the
> bowels of sysinstall at the go-fetchum-fileos-from-somewhere menu, to
> allow reading from tapeofileos the necessary bytebits?

Assuming this still works with 1.6, I did actually create my own install
tape (TK50) for the 1.4.1 release using the boot.fs.  I'm trying to
remember exactly how it all fit together.  It's hard to believe I worked
on that three years ago.  IIRC, I wrote the standalone boot blocks and
the then the boot.fs image to the tape.  This was followed by tarring
all the various tarballs to the to tape.  Once I booted into sysinstall,
I partitioned the drive for my install, setting aside a fairly large
partition under /mnt2 (or something like that).  Following the
partitioning and newfs'ing, I dropped to the shell, mounted /mnt2, used
`mt' and the non-rewinding tape device to seek to the proper eof marker
on the boot/install tape, tarred off the tarballs into /mnt2, and
continued with the install, pointing it /mnt2 to find the tarballs.

It certainly wasn't elegant, and I know this isn't what you're wanting,
but it worked; I was happy that I could install my MicroVAX-II from a
single TK50.

I've sort of a love/hate relationship with magnetic tape, given that my
current job entails managing hundreds of terabytes of it.  Somehow, I've
managed to maintain a soft spot for tape; I'd be willing to work on
adapting sysinstall for a more seamless tape install, but it's not going
to happen anytime soon.  Those hundreds of terabytes of tape are keeping
me rather busy--and thankfully, gainfully employed--at the moment, and
they will be for at least the next 10 months.

If someone doesn't beat me to it, maybe it'll happen for 1.7?

-brian.