Buchan Milne wrote:
> Felix Miata wrote:
> > OTOH, not being able to make a standard boot floppy is a serious
> > handicap to those who for whatever reason can't or don't boot from
> > the HD, and don't have CDRW or don't want to boot from CD each time.
> Hmm, IMHO better to ensure that they can boot from the HD. If there are
> still any guides about linux suggesting not to install the bootloader on
> the HD, let's go and trash them.
All well and good for geeks, but not so hot for the less adept
multibooters who fix their broken windoze by reinstalling some version
of M$'s OS, thus losing ready access to Linux, since such people need be
lead by the hand to do a rescue boot repair.
> When was the last time you booted a normal machine off a floppy (ie in
> normal operation). Have you *ever* done this for windows?
I don't routinely use windoze, but that's irrelevant. I think I
performed that exercise once very long ago just to prove the concept.
OTOH, until Mandrake quit including making a boot floppy during install,
booting from the new floppy was always the first thing I did after a
Linux install.
If you need boot regularly, HD boot is pretty convenient. OTOH, with a
boot floppy, you're confident being able to reach Linux easily even
after windoze disaster, or even Linux installation disaster, when adding
an additional distro elsewhere on the system and the new goes haywire,
ruining access to the previous.
> > I see a 'kernel memory freed' statement of nearly 200K on every boot.
> initrd image.
> > It seems there ought to be a streamlined way to compile a kernel that
> > would not produce that result, with the result that a boot floppy
> > could easily be produced to fit in 1440K space.
> $ du -k /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.22-9mdk
> 1320 /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.22-9mdk
> 120k is not a lot ...
In the context of legacy boot media, 120K is a lot, easily the
difference between a floppy that boots and one that doesn't.
Why so much kernel and initrd swell of late?
RedHat 6.2
407607 Mar 31 2000 initrd-2.2.14-5.0.img
640052 Mar 7 2000 vmlinuz-2.2.14-5.0
1047659
Mandrake 7.1
425011 Sep 20 2000 initrd-2.2.15-4mdk.img
677157 May 10 2000 vmlinuz-2.2.15-4mdk
1102168
Corel 1.1
1033812 Sep 14 2000 vmlinuz-2.2.14
1033812
Caldera 3.1
466584 Oct 15 2001 initrd-2.4.2.gz
744522 Apr 21 2001 vmlinuz-2.4.2
1211106
Mandrake 8.1
2001 initrd-2.4.8-26mdk.img
1047752 Sep 23 2001 vmlinuz-2.4.8-26mdk
Caldera 3.1.1
483937 Apr 4 2002 initrd-2.4.13.gz
777783 Dec 13 2001 vmlinuz-2.4.13
1261720
Mandrake 8.2
2002 initrd-2.4.18-6mdk.img
887614 Mar 14 2002 vmlinuz-2.4.18-6mdk
RedHat 7.3
159579 Sep 24 2002 initrd-2.4.18-3.img
1041347 Apr 18 2002 vmlinuz-2.4.18-3
1200926
Mandrake 9.0
138691 Sep 30 2002 initrd-2.4.19-16mdk.img
880346 Sep 20 2002 vmlinuz-2.4.19-16mdk
1019037
RedHat 9.0
183942 Aug 24 23:08 initrd-2.4.20-8.img
1096436 Mar 13 2003 vmlinuz-2.4.20-8
1280378
Mandrake 9.1
137973 Jul 30 17:47 initrd-2.4.21-0.13mdk.img
1252778 Mar 14 2003 vmlinuz-2.4.21-0.13mdk
1390751
SuSE 8.2 (from boot floppy)
194034 Apr 24 10:20 bootlogo*
1173985 Apr 24 10:20 linux*
1368019
Mandrake 9.1
127509 Jul 30 17:48 initrd-2.4.21-0.25mdk.img
1263795 Jul 24 16:02 vmlinuz-2.4.21-0.25mdk
1391304
Mandrake 9.2
414616 Sep 22 12:46 initrd-2.4.22-10mdk.img
1343803 Sep 18 06:43 vmlinuz-2.4.22-10mdk
1758419
--
"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom...."
Proverbs 9:10 NIV
Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409
Felix Miata *** http://members.ij.net/mrmazda/
