Re: Boot-Floppies

[Matt Porter <mmporter@home.com>]

On Wed, 18 Aug 1999, Hartmut Koptein wrote:

> Moin all,
> 
> 
> we have one problem: the size. We don't like bigger floppies then 1.44 MB.
> All others make trouble -- also for the boot-CD. 
> 
> So what can we do?
> 
> * a two floppy setup
> * rescue without linux
> * downsizeing the ramdisk
> * ...

If a user is going to use something as archaic as a 1.44MB floppy to
install, it shouldn't be too much for them to use a split boot/root dual
floppy approach.  That would leave a lot of space for the rootfs.  If you
take it a step further and make a separate rescue image for floppy users
which doesn't have dbootstrap etc.

The majority of people will be using CDROM to boot, I'd imagine.

On x86, El Torito allows 2.88MB right?

It seems the constraints we have are the following:

* on all platforms we are limited to 1.44MB floppies (Special case #1)
* on x86 CD-ROM we are limited to 1.44/2.88MB boot images and any size
  livefs we want (Special case #2)
* on PowerPC/PReP we don't have any CDROM limitations.
* what about others?

Just looking at this it seems we only have to modify things for the
special case #1 since that is the only one that can't fit current size of
the boot/root images.  If I understand El Torito incorrectly, please let
me know...

--
Matt Porter
mmporter@home.com
This is Linux Country. On a quiet night, you can hear Windows reboot.