*BSD News Article 86662


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From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: replacing the kernel on the boot floppy - how?
Date: 11 Jan 1997 00:09:13 GMT
Organization: Private BSD site, Dresden
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aslam@lums.edu.pk (Sohail Aslam) wrote:

>  How can I replace the kernel on the
> boot floppy with the kernel that has the new driver? I am using 2.2Beta.
> [I suspect it is a simple matter of compressing the kernel (gzip) and
> replacing the one on the floppy.]

Unfortunately not.  This kernel has a frozen-in memory file system
that becomes the root MFS after booting, containing sysinstall and the
other required binaries to bootstrap the system.

Normally, you need to create a full release in order to build the boot
floppies.  There's also something contributed by Julian Elischer which
is supposed to allow rebuilding a single boot or fixit floppy, you can
find it in /usr/src/release/floppies/.  Still, you need a full source
and object tree, so the crunched binaries on the boot floppy can be
built.  But at least, you don't need a CVS tree, nor do you need the
500 MB of space for the chroot environment that is required during a
regular `make release'.

The downside is, this stuff is a little orphaned.  Hence you might
need to sync something in the floppie's build environment with the
stuff from /usr/src/release/ itself (which is used during the creation
of the test-releases, and therefore well-tested).

-- 
cheers, J"org

joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)