Andreas Gredler wrote: > Is there a way to handle this? Could a kernel be patched to read data > from multiple floppy disks? I know that this question sounds a little > bit stupid, but floppies still seem to be the most reliable way to boot.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:/boot>ls -l vmlinuz-2.6.11-1-386 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1170465 May 20 04:54 vmlinuz-2.6.11-1-386 Since d-i currently puts the initrd that reads the second floppy (or other USB media) on the boot floppy with the kernel, we either have to shoehorn that initrd, which is currently 644k, onto the same floppy, reducing its size by 414k somehow. uclibc is one possibility, but 409-some kilobytes of that 644k are used for kernel modules and other stuff that uclibc wouldn't effect (much); only 235k is used for libc currently, and I fear those numbers don't add up to uclibc making it small enough, unless uclibc occupys only 5k of the compressed disk. Maybe other changes, like using initramfs for that image, a little kernel hacking to remove a few modules that are barely used (like ide-core which is on there for only 1 symbol on 2.4; didn't check 2.6), and so on might just make it work. Or we could make make some compromise, such as using the kernel initrd loader to load the initrd from a second floppy, which might cause problems for USB floppy installs (does the kernel initrd loader support usb floppies?) and would break the floppy+usb stick install path. It would also add yet another floppy to the install, probably. -- see shy jo
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