Re: Options MEMORY_DISK_SERVER

[Tim Rightnour <root%garbled.net@localhost>]

On 02-Jan-2008 Alan Barrett wrote:
> I thought we had stopped caring about the number of install floppies,
> at least for architectures that use ustarfs and kernels with embedded
> ramdisks.  prep doesn't seem to use that method of dealing with boot
> floppies, and I don't know whether it's feasible to convert it.

It really can't.  Prep firmware is unintelligent and has no callbacks.  The
prep firmware reads the contents of a floppy into ram and executes.  There is
no way of making it read a second floppy.  (well, except to write a whole host
of drivers into the bootloader, which frankly, I'm just not willing to deal
with)

I hope to eventually get a working CD for prep installation, but truth be told,
I don't understand enough of the mkisofs magic to make it happen.  Basically, I
need to embed an MBR and fdisk partition layout onto a CD, because prep
firmware looks for partition type 0x41 and reads whatever is in there.  I've
tried the prep flags for mkisofs, but they don't work.  The key is that the CD
needs to show up as having an fdisk partition layout when examined with fdisk.

---
Tim Rightnour <root%garbled.net@localhost>
NetBSD: Free multi-architecture OS http://www.netbsd.org/
Genecys: Open Source 3D MMORPG: http://www.genecys.org/