Re: Boot floppy NG for 2.4.7-386

[David Lawyer <dave@lafn.org>]

I'm not on this list, but here's an important subject regarding the
2.4 pre-compiled kernels.  Mine is for the 386 but it likely applies
to other architectures.  It turns out that the boot floppies don't
work if the kernel is compiled without enough support to get the OS
going.  In my case, support for IDE drives is required to to provided
by a module before the HD can be mounted.  Thus the modules that
support the HD need to be on the boot floppy.  Likewise for other
situations.  The fix for this problem has been just to eliminate the
boot floppy.  It's not a good solution.

On Fri, Aug 03, 2001 at 12:28:46PM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> 
>  David> On Thu, Aug 02, 2001 at 08:37:22PM +1000, Herbert Xu wrote:
>  >> Manoj, I think we need to disable the making of boot floppies if initrd
>  >> is enabled.
> 
> "D" == D Lawyer <dave@lafn.org> writes:
D> It's nice to have a boot floppy.  Could someone make them work?  That
D> would mean putting the needed modules on it.  But people don't
D> know what modules they need until they boot the system.  So there
D> could be a script that would be run once the new kernel has booted.
D> It would find the modules listed by lsmod and put them on the floppy.
D> There may be a problem regarding how to load the modules.  You would
D> need a standalone program to load the modules which would fit on the
D> floppy.  It would not be feasible to use a shared library which is too
D> large to fit on the floppy.  A cramfs could be on the floopy if it's
D> small.
> 
> 	I think this has moved it out of the realm of the kernel image
>  postinst -- specially since the new kernel is not running, and the
>  modules that need to go on the floppy are not discernible at this
>  point. 
> 
> 	Perhaps this discussion should be moved to the mailing lists
>  debian-devel@lists.debian.org? 
> 
> 	manoj
			David Lawyer