Why not use a ramdisk? Like the redhat install does it, after the kernel
boots one or more floppes are read into memory and then the ramdisk is mounted
as the root filesystem. Unless these computers only have 4 megs, you aren't
in any danger of running out of ram.
> A pair of floppies, or better, one disk for each machine would be IDEAL.
> Any ideas? Is it possible? How big would deschall for linux be
> STATICALLY linked (too huge to bother, I spose - I guess the libc-lite
> stuff is probably best to get everything onto one floppy?)
It wouldn't be very big. libc version 5.2.18 is only 550k, so you could try
and stuff that on a floppy. I think all you would need is:
kernel 300k
deschall 35k
a shell (ash is small) 61k
libc 550k
init 19k
ifconfig 21k
route 19k
a few scripts 5k
total 1010k
You can compress the filesystem on the floppy, so even if you go to 2-3 megs
with stuff you don't really need (like agetty and login, in case you want to
log on) you should still be able to stuff it on a floppy. You only need one
disk, as you can remove it when the machine is done booting.
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|came to be, how it begun \ all alone in the family of the sun |
|curiosity teasing everyone \ on our home, third stone from the sun. |
|Trent Piepho (xyzzy@u.washington.edu) -- Metallica |