On Wed, Jun 30, 1999 at 03:19:04PM -0400, Kirk Reiser wrote: > Let me see if I have you straight here. We build a small kernel with > as few options as possible built-in and then we install a larger > kernel on the hard drive with everything necessary either built-in or > as modules. Yes. > I like the small kernel idea because it reduces the disk > space problem and we might be able to have a larger root.bin. My > question is how many more disks would we need to use to contain a full > kernel and modules to be installed. All scenarios that I depicted assume, that after booting and maybe one more floppy, the machine will have access to a really big media like CD-ROM, or the net, from where the rest could be transferred. The full kernel and modules is then just a tiny part of the installation data and it won't matter much how big it is. > I suppose this has the advantage > of allowing a person to determine at download time a kernel set of > disks more closely customized for their computer than we currently > do. No. The average user without rare hardware will only need the standard bootdisk. A few users will need an additional floppy image containing drivers for exotic SCSI adapters or network cards. The full kernel that gets installed afterwards will always be the same. What I did not think of was that "net" above could mean a modem which then requires a pppd to really connect. An additional floppy will be needed for this. I'm not sure if many people would really like to install a full debian system over a modem line though... Nils -- Plug-and-Play is really nice, unfortunately it only works 50% of the time. To be specific the "Plug" almost always works. --unknown source
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