ELF floppy set progress report

[bruce@Pixar.com (Bruce Perens)]

With the upload of "netbase", all of the packages needed to install
the system are now available in ELF form.

There is only one package that I need to compile in a special manner.
e2fsutils compiles fsck.ext2 as a static executable. I have to rebuild
it to use shared libraries to make it fit on the floppy. I think the normal
installed version of fsck.ext2 should be shared as well, but I suppose
not everyone agrees with me.

I have the ELF root floppy running and am working on supporting
Ethernet so that a two-floppy-plus-ethernet install is possible. Once
that works I can try including PPP and SLIP, though this might wait
until after 1.1 . Rather than install both "pppd" and "dip" on the
floppy, is there a version of "pppd" that can set up a SLIP connection?
Or is there a tiny SLIP client that can use "chat"?

So far, the entire root fits on a 1.44 MB floppy without compression,
and on a 1.2 MB floppy with compression. You can boot the 1.44 MB
version without using the RAM disk. The script can tell if it is booted
from the ram disk or not, which is important for cases where it should
offer a choice of floppy drives. I will experiment with 1-floppy
installs after the 1.1 release.

The installation floppies can also be used as a rescue floppy. Most of
the basic file management tools are there, some of them because I wrote
"tiny" versions.

	Thanks

	Bruce
--
Bruce Perens <Bruce@Pixar.com> A campaigner for Clinton and against Censorship.