> if anyone has comments or suggestions on making the sparc bootimage
   > better, please let me know.
   
   How about actually having a root fs on the CD instead of in the kernel?
   Isn't this what a solaris install does?

... this does not help with the floppy  :-(
   
   At the moment, I don't think you can install (via sysinst) from a r/o
   root fs, but with a mfs /tmp and a little magic (to be determined :-)
   there shouldn't be any problems.  No worries about space, seems perfect
   at first glance.  I suspect such a CD would be sparc specific, unless we
   could mount a specific file on a CD image as the root fs.  Now that'd be
   really cool...


this would not be that hard to do, and you could build a cd bootable
on i386, sparc & sun3 (or i386 & alpha -- those are the combos i've
determined will work).  but it means that the cdrom has to remain
inserted, which is a lose.

for the sparc/sun3, you whack a normal sparc partition table into the
iso image (this is OK, as isofs has 32k of blankness at the start),
and then on the end, put some bootable partitions (IIRC, the order is:
sun4, sun4c, sun4m sun3 OR sun4d, sun3x OR sun4e; sun4u is done
differently), and make sure the partition table has these at the right
offset.  the various sparc hardwares knows to boot from the right
partition (eg, "boot cdrom" DTRT)..  currently the image i am using is
the boot floppy.. i could change it to not be an md root, and probably
be able to use the miniroot (but i haven't tested this yet).

perhaps it would be best to have an md0 for the floppy, but to use the
miniroot for the cdrom.  i can still build my own cdrom's that use an
md0 (i *want* this, you see :).


.mrg.