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Topic: Come On, Guys!

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John

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Posts: 695
Joined: Sep. 2003

Posted: July 29 2004,06:38

I know about the single floppy trick, it is done by removing quite a few modules which is interesting.

ripcrd6

Group: Members
Posts: 155
Joined: Dec. 2003

Posted: July 29 2004,14:51

Quote

John:
One thing I want to say is that this might be the top for core desktop applications for DSL. Jumping to the new kernel and isolinux will not be a free transition, it will cost in size. We are likely to lose an app or more, and we'll be forcing those who must boot from a floppy to now use two floppies which will significantly increase their bootup time.

Obviously the choice to jump is not clean, there will be some who'd wish we hadn't. There will be winners and losers from the move.

I'm curious if this will affect the users that boot from floppy to usb. I would think that whatever base kernel is used on the floppy could still hand off to a different kernel in the CD, ISO image or USB location.

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ripcrd6
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Somewhere there is a village missing an idiot.

cbagger01

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Joined: Oct. 2003

Posted: July 29 2004,16:43

If we wanted to pull a Rocky Racoon "And now for something compeletly different", we could bundle the Smart Boot Manager floppy boot program into DSL and use it to create a floppy disk that can be used to boot DSL using the full-blown kernel that is used for the normal livecd bootup.

It's a small and fast way to boot up a livecd with 1 floppy disk when you have a cdrom but do not have a cd-boot capable BIOS. And the floppy boot user gets to run the full DSL kernel instead of a stripped one.

The downsides are that non-standard (IDE/ATAPI) CDROM disk drives may not be detected by Smart Boot Manager (but many of them are already not detected by the current knoppix/feather/dsl boot floppy) and the biggest downside:

As far as I know, you can't use Smart Boot Manager to start up DSL if it is running from a poor man's or frugal install because it cannot boot an ISO image file. It can only boot operating systems that are installed in a bootable partition or are sitting inside a bootable livecd disk.

I am also unsure if you can use Smart Boot Manager to boot up a USB-based DSL install.

If you got some free time, check it out.

TyphoonMentat Offline

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Posts: 183
Joined: Oct. 2003

Posted: July 29 2004,21:34

Quote

I know about the single floppy trick, it is done by removing quite a few modules which is interesting.

John - you're right there, all I did was remove the USB modules (made a separate boot.img) and the Firewire modules. I also compressed the kernel using UPX 1.90, and everything fitted in with room to spare.
If you think you might have to lose an app or two, I have a few suggestions which might work for you which I've implemented in Feather.

jlowell - I, the developer of Feather, also suggest that you keep an eye on DSL. It might turn out that DSL 0.8.0 - whenever it comes out - will suit your needs better than Feather will, and that's perfectly fine with me.

k34nt1 - you mentioned that you'd look forward to posts on the Feather forums, I'd be glad to see you there!

13 replies since July 28 2004,16:49

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