Re: An initrd proposal
On Tue, Oct 19, 1999 at 04:40:24PM +0200, Nils Rennebarth wrote:
> To do something useful in 2), we will need at least a shell, an init
> program and the c library (unless we use only static binaries which I doubt
> would save us something and is too unflexible anyway) We probably want a
> user interface at this point so an ncurses library is necessary.
> All this together with the modules to access the installation binaries
> needs to fit on the bootimage. Let me show how this is possible:
> - IDE hd and cdrom, floppy, common PCI SCSI adapter and scsi hd and cdrom
> should fit(*), covering 90% of the cases.
> Note that this makes a single floppy or no floppy install possible
> for most cases.
> - A completely different initrd for network installs could contain
> all network drivers and network filesystems. It wouldn't need any
> disk modules because it could get them from the network as well
You have the problem here that you afterwards need a different kernel
for booting the resulting installation this might lead to ...
"After the installation the system wont boot" ...
> - For old low memory machines we could construct another initrd image
> containing enough to access the harddisk and create a swap partition.
NFS root ?
I had a small idea on creating a small binary (VERY small) which
is able to get the installer via ftp/http which is currently available
all over the world.
Then you might - Boot of a floppy - Select the mirror near you - And there
you have your installation.
> Note that we do *not* need to install the base system
> at this point, we only need to get access to enough hardware to be able to
> start the installation process.
Lets say we have IDE + SCSI in all Kernels - Then we need a disk
containing ALL modularised network drivers, and a disk containig
"other block devices" for CDRom etc ... Then we are able to
use the same kernel for booting the system afterwards ...
Flo
--
Florian Lohoff flo@rfc822.org +49-5241-470566
... The failure can be random; however, when it does occur, it is
catastrophic and is repeatable ... Cisco Field Notice
Reply to: