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From: mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us (Marc Unangst)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.development
Subject: Re: any chance of...
Date: 31 Mar 1993 22:07:03 -0500
Organization: The Programmers' Pit Stop, Ann Arbor MI
Lines: 24
Message-ID: <1pdm8n$3la@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us>
References: <1993Mar30.163132.6284@cs.wisc.edu> <1pacj7INNqid@fstgds01.tu-graz.ac.at>
NNTP-Posting-Host: mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us
In article <1pacj7INNqid@fstgds01.tu-graz.ac.at> chmr@edvz.tu-graz.ac.at (Christoph Robitschko) writes:
>And how do you copy the distributed kernel onto the hard disk ?
>(Without having a compressed copy of the kernel on the root disk, of course.)
Instead of mounting a floppy disk as the root filesystem, create a
ramdisk and copy the contents of a floppy-root to it, and then mount
*that* as root. This is what SVR4 does, and it has two advantages: 1)
you aren't limited to what you can fit on a single floppy for the root
filesystem -- SVR4 has two 1.2MB disks that get copied to the ramdisk,
for example; and 2) you can then remove the floppy-root disk and
replace it with another disk (your kernel disk, or even a disk with
backup copies of /etc/passwd and /etc/group). One disadvantage is
that it won't work on a small-memory system, where you don't have
enough RAM to create a 2MB or 3MB ramdisk. The other disadvantage is,
naturally, that someone will have to write a ramdisk driver for
386BSD. (This could actually be an advantage, if the driver was
written such that it could be used as a tmpfs driver in a production
kernel. Two birds with one stone...)
--
Marc Unangst, N8VRH | "Unencumbered with facts as I am, I will
mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us | comment."
| -Drew Larson in alt.folklore.computers;
| now the official Usenet Motto