Re: Any support for legacy-free systems? (was: Re: Can a rescue floppy load some modules before the installer starts?)
Kaz Sasayama <Kaz.Sasayama@HyperLinuxJP.com> writes:
> OK, so what is special about the USB keyboard in the "compact" flavor?
> Does it try to load any USB keyboard modules?
Nothing at all. The compact flavor (as well as idepci) is really what
should be the default flavor. It drops a lot of legacy support.
> Even if so, I don't believe potato's "compact" boot floppy could boot
> on the machine as potato's syslinux didn't boot Linux on such a
> machine, although woody's one may.
Can you please test and see?
If we're in deep dookey because we don't support USB machines (with
the legacy support turn on), then I want to know about it, and I want
to know ASAP.
If it's a syslinux problem solved in a version of syslinux newer than
what is in Woody right now, then a Critical bug needs to be opened on
syslinux.
If we simply don't support some machines that don't have legacy
keyboard support, then we'll need to look at how many they are, and
whether we can add this support to the compact and idepci flavors.
The vanilla i386 kernel simply doesn't have any more room.
> As a commercial tech support, I
> recently had to make a kernel with USB, a new syslinux, a set of boot
> floppies, and a bootable CD image for our customer to boot Debian 2.2
> on his machine. So my current question is this: will woody support his
> machine out of the box?
Well, please test and see. If not, then we need to get the bugs filed
and fixed. If you don't help us test, then we'll never know.
Or someone can send me one of those machines! :)
> Today I see a difference on a legacy-free machine. Is that my
> misunderstanding, then?
>
> Oh, I found the keyboard hardware emulation requirements in the PC99
> Design Guide, but *not* in the PC 2001 Design Guide. (See
> <URL:http://www.pcdesguide.org/pc2001/default.htm>.) PC 2001 even
> requires to prevent the keyboard ports from being detected by the OS
> on a legacy-free PC.
Is it just me or does that sound kinda stupid?
> Some old programs might not work, but it would
> be OK if the machine is legacy-free.
>
> So, do you say Debian doesn't officially support any PC 2001
> legacy-free PCs? I hope you wouldn't.
I dunno, it requires testing. Or is this just a paper spec which no
one has actually implemented anyhow?
--
...Adam Di Carlo..<adam@onshore-devel.com>...<URL:http://www.onshored.com/>
Reply to: