From: rchen@fraser.sfu.ca (Robert Chen) Subject: Re: Linux on a diskless workstation? Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1993 07:28:47 GMT
In article <1r1fncINN26m@no-names.nerdc.ufl.edu> kem@cis.ufl.edu (Kelly Murray) writes:
>If a machine has a floppy drive, there is no problem to solve!
>You just boot the kernel using the floppy, have a tiny root be
>read from the floppy into a RAM disk, and then use NSF for everything
>else. This is possible with Linux as it is distributed today.
>(I'll sell anyone such a boot disk for $50... :-)
>
>The hard part is getting rid of the floppy drive, which requires
>a boot ROM that can download the kernel. This requires changes
>in the kernel, as well as figuring out how to get the code into
>a ROM and debugging the whole damn thing.
For $50 I would pay to see you get the standard libs, math libs, XFree
libs, XView libs, compressed kernel, and "tiny" root capable of
mounting NFS all onto one 1.44M floppy. If your assumption is that
the host machine has only static binaries, my response is "Pfffft".
I think you are forgetting that Linux NFS is incapable of supporting
shared libs or swap files. Please correct me if I am wrong.
- Rob