Re: booting from a raid0 device.

[Enrique Zanardi <ezanardi@ull.es>]

On Thu, Apr 15, 1999 at 03:48:43AM +0200, Turbo Fredriksson wrote:
>     Enrique> Also I am still not impressed with the idea of having
>     Enrique> separate boot and root floppies. I still think that with
>     Enrique> a properly built initrd and a bare bones kernel we may
>     Enrique> keep using just one rescue floppy and put everything else
>     Enrique> on several drivers floppies.
> 
> Sounds reasonable. You still need the SCSI/IDE/ext2 in the kernel, along
> with some network stuff...

Not really. We may load IDE or SCSI modules from the initrd, or from
floppy. The approach I'm thinking about is something like the following
(for i386, I haven't thought about other arches yet)

"floppy-booted" installations
	one rescue disk with:
	 - "bare bones" kernel: no IDE, no SCSI, just floppy
	 - initrd with IDE
	(optional) one rescue disk with:
	 - "bare bones" kernel
	 - initrd with some drivers for some popular SCSI cards
	several drivers disks (not all users will have to install all the
	disks, just those with modules that they need):
	 - (optional) IDE modules
	 - SCSI modules
	 - PCMCIA modules
	 - network modules
	 ...

(We may put some modules on a modules.tgz file on the rescue floppy if
there's space left).

"CD-ROM-booted" or "network-booted" installations:
	one huge rescue disk image with:
	 - "bare bones" kernel
	 - initrd with all modules

I see a few cons (it's more complex than what we have now, user can't
replace kernel and modules without changing the inird image, ...) but it
looks like a good way to fix our space constraints, and IMO it scales better
and it's easier to use than the "boot & root floppies" approach.
Comments?

--
Enrique Zanardi					   ezanardi@ull.es