Re: [9fans] ideas for a new install procedure

[Dan Cross <cross@math.psu.edu>]

In article <20011114081504.7024919A27@mail.cse.psu.edu> you write:
>One way would be to ship a kernel with just enough to download another
>kernel from the network (like the 50M distribution file). Then
>use that kernel to boot the real installer.

Don't you have a bootstrapping problem, though?  How do you get to
the network to get the bigger kernel unless you compile a lot of
drivers into the smallish one?  It seems that drivers are what's
making the kernel too big.

One possibility might be to strip out ``dead'' drivers for old or
rarely used components.  Or put drivers for older components in a
different kernel.

>I think I like this more than I like dynamic modules for the kernel
>(which I think I read are being included). But if that's the case, these
>modules can also be downloaded either from the net or from wherever the
>50M dist file is being downloaded.

I'm not sure I dig the idea of loadable drivers myself.  And
somebody's doing perl.  There goes the neighborhood.

>Also, is 9pcdisk.gz using bzip2? If not, bzip2 can reach higher
>compression rates. Still remember when I had to use `make bzImage'
>instead of `make zImage' for linux...

I'm not sure that the gain using bzip2 will be enough to solve the
problem.  Multiple floppies will work, but are kind of an ugly solution
(but not all solutions have to be beautiful; bootstrapping is ugly in
general).  Eventually, the kernel might get too big for a single
floppy, though, and then what?  Will we ever have that many drivers?

I still like the idea of linking a custom kernel and putting that onto
the download floppy best.  It seems like the most likely to scale
temporally.

However, as Nemo says, a machine with current sources (or close to
current) that people can login to over the Internet would be really
very cool.

	- Dan C.

(btw- is this the appropriate time to ask for 9pccd and PXE bootloader
support?  :-)