Greywolf wrote:

> On 5 Mar 2000, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
> 
> # 
> # Simon Burge <simonb@netbsd.org> writes:
> # > How does the following look for a quick hack?  It adds a ``M'' flag
> # > that says to keep temporary info in memory instead of on disk.  Note
> # 
> # How's this for a quick hack? The decision to replace gtar with pax on
> # the install media was ill advised and not discussed with anyone. I say
> # we move back.
> 
> These are problems that could have been avoided if someone had tested
> the install.  Considering that it fails on a 96MB i386 box, I'm not
> at all convinced that someone did.  How is the size of the install
> filesystem determined?

A quick response before I run off and play a game of golf...

When gtar was switched for pax, it probably did work ok.  AFAIK, it
still works ok on (most?) other architectures.  The current problem
seems to be that the contents of the install ramdisk on the i386 has
grown such that there's now less that 20-odd kbytes free.  This in
itself is a problem and would have been noticed as soon as some other
bloat in a library or program grew by that much.  Perhaps the last
incantation of the install disk wasn't tested properly, but I think
shooting pax is the wrong thing here.

Note I'm not defending pax - I don't care much which archive program
we use, but pax is good for the project's goals of less GPL stuff.

Simon.