Re: Alpha boot floppies
Martin Lucina writes:
>
> > If all goes well, I plan to generate a new set this week-end.
>
> I seem to remember that when installing some things were out of sync.
> For example when using 'NFS' as an install method dinstall would try to
> load the NFS module but NFS was compiled into the kernel.
Here was the rational to compile NFS into the kernel: the number of
floppies required for an installation is an important matter (user
frustration seems to be exponential with the number of floppies).
On Alpha you need one more floppy than on x86 because
MILO/kernel/root.bin will not fit on one disk. By putting NFS and
network drivers into the kernel, the user does not need to have a
driver floppies when installing from net which brings down again the
number of floppies, this is also only possible because there are few
network cards supported on Alpha.
> > [...]
> > I was wondering if it would be better to add special support in the
> > kernel/cfdisk/fdisk to put optionally the PC partitioning info at a
> > different place on the boot sector (to avoid conflicting with the SRM
> > boot info). So people coming for the Linux/x86 world do not need to
>
> This sounds horribly like a kludge. I would rather spend the weekend improving
> the BSD disklabel support in fdisk/cfdisk. I'm not familiar with the
> boot-sector layout, but I wasn't aware that the PC partitions and SRM
> bootinfo overlap. Even if you decide to implement this, I would still like
> to see a documented procedure for those who would like to use BSD
> disklabels.
I know it may sounds like a kludge, but unless you can come with a
consistent interface in cfdisk/sfdisk/fdisk to modify either PC
partition or BSD partitions, it will save a lot of time for a lot of
people. Advanced users use sfdisk in scripts for instance, novice
users probably are not interested into learning other partitioning
schemes.
Of course, if I try to implement this, it will not prevent to use BSD
disklabel.
Loic
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