Technical discussion of improvements to NetBSD's installation software

Garrett D'Amore | 9 May 2006 01:45

Re: buildfloppies.sh: Image is 3387 bytes (3 KB) too big to fit on 2 disks

Frederick Bruckman wrote:
> In article <000e01c671b0$3bf347e0$0100a8c0 <at> gargamel>,
> 	"Konstantin KABASSANOV" <Konstantin.Kabassanov <at> lip6.fr> writes:
>   
>> PAX=/usr/tools/bin/nbpax sh /usr/src/distrib/common/buildfloppies.sh  -i
>> "/usr/tools/bin/nbinstallboot  -mi386  <at> IMAGE <at> 
>> /usr/obj/destdir.i386/usr/mdec/bootxx_ustarfs" -p  -m 2 -s .fs  boot 2880
>> boot  netbsd
>> Running instboot: /usr/tools/bin/nbinstallboot -mi386 floppy.25252.tar
>> /usr/obj/destdir.i386/usr/mdec/bootxx_ustarfs
>> Free space in last tar block: boot 188, netbsd 315,
>> buildfloppies.sh: Image is 3387 bytes (3 KB) too big to fit on 2 disks
>>
>> *** Failed target:  boot1.fs
>> *** Failed command: PAX=/usr/tools/bin/nbpax sh
>> /usr/src/distrib/common/buildfloppies.sh -i "/usr/tools/bin/nbinstallboot
>> -mi386  <at> IMAGE <at>  /usr/obj/destdir.i386/usr/mdec/bootxx_ustarfs" -p -m 2 -s .fs
>> boot 2880 boot netbsd
>> *** Error code 1
>>
>> Stop.
>> nbmake: stopped in /usr/src/distrib/i386/floppies/bootfloppy
>>     
>
> "Me too."
>
> I propose removing "bad144" from the i386 installation media.
>
> I find that "bootfloppy" and "bootfloppy-com" *just* *fit* into
> 2880 KB with 0K padding, after commenting out "bad144" from

(Continue reading)

Frederick Bruckman | 9 May 2006 02:56

Re: buildfloppies.sh: Image is 3387 bytes (3 KB) too big to fit on 2 disks

On Mon, 8 May 2006, Garrett D'Amore wrote:

> Frederick Bruckman wrote:
>>
>> I propose removing "bad144" from the i386 installation media.
>>
>> I find that "bootfloppy" and "bootfloppy-com" *just* *fit* into
>> 2880 KB with 0K padding, after commenting out "bad144" from
>> "ramdisk-big/list". Does anyone have a better idea? Would anyone
>> really miss "bad144"?  Is that even enough, or will it just fill
>> up again in a day or two?
>
>
> Hmm... it strikes me that we are fighting a never ending battle with the
> 1.44 media.  Maybe its time to rethink this?

Sure, every time this happens...

The floppies, as such, aren't really the issue, since we could just 
make three, or five...

> Don't like ~99% just use network or CDROMs as the way they install now?
> Is it worth spending a huge amount of effort to try to make things
> slightly easier for that last 1%?

The CDROMs -- likely the most popular install media -- are the 
problem. The El Torrito emulation section must be no more than 
2880kb, and that's what's overfilling now (ramdisk-big).

It's been suggested that we forego the emulation, but older BIOS's

(Continue reading)

Jason Thorpe | 9 May 2006 05:31

Re: buildfloppies.sh: Image is 3387 bytes (3 KB) too big to fit on 2 disks

On May 8, 2006, at 5:56 PM, Frederick Bruckman wrote:

> The CDROMs -- likely the most popular install media -- are the  
> problem. The El Torrito emulation section must be no more than  
> 2880kb, and that's what's overfilling now (ramdisk-big).

What about hard drive emulation that El Torrito also supports?

-- thorpej

Frederick Bruckman | 9 May 2006 07:36

Re: buildfloppies.sh: Image is 3387 bytes (3 KB) too big to fit on 2 disks

On Mon, 8 May 2006, Jason Thorpe wrote:

> On May 8, 2006, at 5:56 PM, Frederick Bruckman wrote:
>
>> The CDROMs -- likely the most popular install media -- are the problem. The 
>> El Torrito emulation section must be no more than 2880kb, and that's what's 
>> overfilling now (ramdisk-big).
>
> What about hard drive emulation that El Torrito also supports?

Whoo Hoo! It works! I made an 11MB ffs image, did "fdisk" (no 
disklabel), did "installboot", copied in "/boot" and "/netbsd.gz", and 
installed it into the CDROM the usual way, adding "-hard-disk-boot" to 
${MKISOFS_OPTION}. "ls" from the bootloader works, and "boot 
hd0e:netbsd.gz" boots into the installer.

I used a "vnd". I'll have to look at how to do it the new way.

Seems like the way to go?

Frederick

Hubert Feyrer | 9 May 2006 12:14

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Re: buildfloppies.sh: Image is 3387 bytes (3 KB) too big to fit on 2 disks


Frederick,

On Tue, 9 May 2006, Frederick Bruckman wrote:
> Seems like the way to go?

not to spoil your enthusiasm,
but may I please ask you to have a look at the proposal that I've sent 
out, and comment on that? It has been up for some time, and re-doing all 
this from the start seems counterproductive to me.

  - Hubert

Hubert Feyrer | 9 May 2006 12:16

Picon

Re: buildfloppies.sh: Image is 3387 bytes (3 KB) too big to fit on 2 disks

On Tue, 9 May 2006, Hubert Feyrer wrote:
>> Seems like the way to go?
>
> not to spoil your enthusiasm,
> but may I please ask you to have a look at the proposal that I've sent out, 
> and comment on that? It has been up for some time, and re-doing all this from 
> the start seems counterproductive to me.

Oh, and using our shiny new makefs -t cd9660 would also be very nice 
instead of a mkisofs that we don't have in-tree.

  - Hubert

Daniel Carosone | 9 May 2006 07:54

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Re: buildfloppies.sh: Image is 3387 bytes (3 KB) too big to fit on 2 disks

On Tue, May 09, 2006 at 12:36:40AM -0500, Frederick Bruckman wrote:
> Seems like the way to go?

Yes, that or using the boot_cd9660 functionality (which is missing a
couple of details, like working 'ls' from the bootloader prompt, but
is perhaps likely to be more MI).  It seems likely we'll need a mix of
both.

That's enough to get a kernel loaded, and have a functional filesystem
to mount as root (rather than needing an md image in the kernel).

What I'd also like to see, regardless of how we get to this point, is
using the init.chroot functionality to allow a kernel with very small
md root image, perhaps loaded via some media that might include a
floppy, to then use some other media (non-bootable CD or USB stick,
NFS, etc) as root to load additional binaries and continue the
install/rescue/whatever process.  

This would mean that the "install image" filesystem and the "method of
booting it" need not be so tightly coupled as they are now. Perhaps we
then may not need to duplicate so much of the install media for
distribution, including also offering useful opportunities for sharing
on the "multi" CD/DVD images.

--
Dan.

Frederick Bruckman | 9 May 2006 23:32

Re: buildfloppies.sh: Image is 3387 bytes (3 KB) too big to fit on 2 disks

In article <20060509055420.GE17851 <at> bcd.geek.com.au>,
	Daniel Carosone <dan <at> geek.com.au> writes:
> 
> On Tue, May 09, 2006 at 12:36:40AM -0500, Frederick Bruckman wrote:
>> Seems like the way to go?
> 
> Yes, that or using the boot_cd9660 functionality (which is missing a
> couple of details, like working 'ls' from the bootloader prompt, but
> is perhaps likely to be more MI).  It seems likely we'll need a mix of
> both.

I should point out that my succesful test (of hard disk emulation)
used NetBSD-2.1 "fdisk" and "installboot". The "dev" and "ls" seem
to be broken with the current bootblocks, no matter the device.

> That's enough to get a kernel loaded, and have a functional filesystem
> to mount as root (rather than needing an md image in the kernel).

That sounds nice.  [Everyone should realize that that's not what
"hard disk emulation" does at all. HDE only works for BIOS INT 13
mode, so to NetBSD, it's basically a giant floppy.]

> What I'd also like to see, regardless of how we get to this point, is
> using the init.chroot functionality to allow a kernel with very small
> md root image, perhaps loaded via some media that might include a
> floppy, to then use some other media (non-bootable CD or USB stick,
> NFS, etc) as root to load additional binaries and continue the
> install/rescue/whatever process. =20
> 
> This would mean that the "install image" filesystem and the "method of

(Continue reading)

David Laight | 9 May 2006 19:27

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Re: buildfloppies.sh: Image is 3387 bytes (3 KB) too big to fit on 2 disks

On Tue, May 09, 2006 at 03:54:20PM +1000, Daniel Carosone wrote:
> 
> What I'd also like to see, regardless of how we get to this point, is
> using the init.chroot functionality to allow a kernel with very small
> md root image, perhaps loaded via some media that might include a
> floppy, to then use some other media (non-bootable CD or USB stick,
> NFS, etc) as root to load additional binaries and continue the
> install/rescue/whatever process.  

One very useful feature of the current 'kernel+ramdisk' is that you can
pxeboot (or equiv.) the install kernel, then continue the install
using ftp (etc) to load the sets.

I don't think that requiring the 'root' filesystem come from another
device gives anything like the same flexibility.  Indeed I suspect
it would require extra kernels (etc) to be built over and above the
'too many' that are built today.

	David

--

-- 
David Laight: david <at> l8s.co.uk

Ben Collver | 9 May 2006 19:48

Re: buildfloppies.sh: Image is 3387 bytes (3 KB) too big to fit on 2 disks

On Tue, May 09, 2006 at 06:27:07PM +0100, David Laight wrote:
> One very useful feature of the current 'kernel+ramdisk' is that you can
> pxeboot (or equiv.) the install kernel, then continue the install
> using ftp (etc) to load the sets.
> 
> I don't think that requiring the 'root' filesystem come from another
> device gives anything like the same flexibility.  Indeed I suspect
> it would require extra kernels (etc) to be built over and above the
> 'too many' that are built today.

Do you think it would work to netboot a kernel and then use NFS root?

On the other hand, I once did an install on an old laptop with only a
floppy and a serial port.  It is nice to have slattach and a shell on
hand.

Ben

Thor Lancelot Simon | 9 May 2006 08:03

Re: buildfloppies.sh: Image is 3387 bytes (3 KB) too big to fit on 2 disks

On Mon, May 08, 2006 at 08:31:02PM -0700, Jason Thorpe wrote:
> 
> On May 8, 2006, at 5:56 PM, Frederick Bruckman wrote:
> 
> >The CDROMs -- likely the most popular install media -- are the  
> >problem. The El Torrito emulation section must be no more than  
> >2880kb, and that's what's overfilling now (ramdisk-big).
> 
> What about hard drive emulation that El Torrito also supports?

The problem is that there are machines out there that *only*
support the virtual-floppy boot method.  I used to have one on my desk. :-/

--

-- 
  Thor Lancelot Simon	                                     tls <at> rek.tjls.com

  "We cannot usually in social life pursue a single value or a single moral
   aim, untroubled by the need to compromise with others."      - H.L.A. Hart

Daniel Carosone | 9 May 2006 08:26

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Re: buildfloppies.sh: Image is 3387 bytes (3 KB) too big to fit on 2 disks

On Tue, May 09, 2006 at 02:03:17AM -0400, Thor Lancelot Simon wrote:
> > What about hard drive emulation that El Torrito also supports?
> 
> The problem is that there are machines out there that *only*
> support the virtual-floppy boot method.  I used to have one on my desk. :-/

And there are worse than that, including some that only support 1.44Mb
emulated floppies, and of course a whole class of machines that can't
boot from cd at all for one reason or another.

The thing that's got us all gridlocked and causes trouble every time
the install floppies blow out for size, is that we're trying to cram
two things into one:

 - a bootable kernel that fits on small media, including emulated
   media.

 - a runnable filesystem image with functional and user-friendly
   installation and recovery tools, graphical or otherwise.

If we decouple these things, and/or bundle the latter with the install
sets on an .iso that may also include a bootable kernel for those
machines that can cope with one, as I outlined in another post, we can
improve life for almost all cases.

The one case that I can think of which doesn't fit quite as easily is
the floppy-only install, with sets fetched by FTP directly from the
project servers/mirrors.  It may be that installs on such machines
will need to involve other local infrastructure for (eg) NFS or SMB or
even eventually iSCSI mounting of the install filesystem image (via

(Continue reading)

Frederick Bruckman | 9 May 2006 03:44

Re: buildfloppies.sh: Image is 3387 bytes (3 KB) too big to fit on 2 disks

On Mon, 8 May 2006, Frederick Bruckman wrote:

> The CDROMs -- likely the most popular install media -- are the problem. The 
> El Torrito emulation section must be no more than 2880kb, and that's what's 
> overfilling now (ramdisk-big).
>
> It's been suggested that we forego the emulation, but older BIOS's likely 
> won't be able to deal with that.  I think the idea was to have a small El 
> Torrito section with just a bootloader, to load a kernel out of the ISO 
> image. Does the current bootloader support that? (Don't answer that. I just 
> built a current CDROM -- I'll try to load one of the compressed kernels right 
> now.)

So close.  "dev" and "ls" seem to be broken, by the way.  "boot 
cd0a:i386/binary/kernel/netbsd-GENERIC.gz" actually spins the CDROM 
(as does cd0d:...), but says "No file found...".  Was that supposed to 
work?

It occurs to me that anyone who wants to work on this might need to 
actually build a release, so again, what to toss out?  IMO, "bad144" 
stands out as the most useless thing on the list, and "bootfloppy" and 
"bootfloppy-com" just fit without it, but it's not big enough to buy 
us much time before this happens again.

Frederick

Hubert Feyrer | 9 May 2006 03:52

Picon

Re: buildfloppies.sh: Image is 3387 bytes (3 KB) too big to fit on 2 disks

On Mon, 8 May 2006, Frederick Bruckman wrote:
> So close.  "dev" and "ls" seem to be broken, by the way.  "boot 
> cd0a:i386/binary/kernel/netbsd-GENERIC.gz" actually spins the CDROM (as does 
> cd0d:...), but says "No file found...".  Was that supposed to work?

No, and it was brought up before.
Someone even posted a patch, but I didn't get it to work.
Feel free to dig the archives and work on that, I'd appreciate it!

> It occurs to me that anyone who wants to work on this might need to actually 
> build a release, so again, what to toss out?  IMO, "bad144" stands out as the 
> most useless thing on the list, and "bootfloppy" and "bootfloppy-com" just 
> fit without it, but it's not big enough to buy us much time before this 
> happens again.

See my reply to Garrett's mail.

  - Hubert

Frederick Bruckman | 9 May 2006 04:04

Re: buildfloppies.sh: Image is 3387 bytes (3 KB) too big to fit on 2 disks

In article <Pine.LNX.4.61.0605090350540.15476 <at> m24s24.vlinux.de>,
	Hubert Feyrer <hubert <at> feyrer.de> writes:
> On Mon, 8 May 2006, Frederick Bruckman wrote:
>> So close.  "dev" and "ls" seem to be broken, by the way.  "boot 
>> cd0a:i386/binary/kernel/netbsd-GENERIC.gz" actually spins the CDROM (as does 
>> cd0d:...), but says "No file found...".  Was that supposed to work?
> 
> No, and it was brought up before.
> Someone even posted a patch, but I didn't get it to work.
> Feel free to dig the archives and work on that, I'd appreciate it!
> 
> 
>> It occurs to me that anyone who wants to work on this might need to actually 
>> build a release, so again, what to toss out?  IMO, "bad144" stands out as the 
>> most useless thing on the list, and "bootfloppy" and "bootfloppy-com" just 
>> fit without it, but it's not big enough to buy us much time before this 
>> happens again.
> 
> See my reply to Garrett's mail.

It sounds like a good plan..., but it doesn't sound like it'll be
ready this week. What'll we do about the broken "make release", in
the meantime?

Frederick

Hubert Feyrer | 9 May 2006 04:29

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Re: buildfloppies.sh: Image is 3387 bytes (3 KB) too big to fit on 2 disks

On Tue, 9 May 2006, Frederick Bruckman wrote:
> It sounds like a good plan..., but it doesn't sound like it'll be
> ready this week. What'll we do about the broken "make release", in
> the meantime?

My changes won't touch that anyways.

Possible fixes are
  * remove e.g. bad144
  * go to three floppies for bootfloppy and bootfloppy-com
  * ?

Someone decide, I don't care.

  - Hubert

Garrett D'Amore | 9 May 2006 04:42

Re: buildfloppies.sh: Image is 3387 bytes (3 KB) too big to fit on 2 disks

Hubert Feyrer wrote:
> On Tue, 9 May 2006, Frederick Bruckman wrote:
>> It sounds like a good plan..., but it doesn't sound like it'll be
>> ready this week. What'll we do about the broken "make release", in
>> the meantime?
>
> My changes won't touch that anyways.
>
> Possible fixes are
>  * remove e.g. bad144
>  * go to three floppies for bootfloppy and bootfloppy-com
>  * ?
>
> Someone decide, I don't care.
>
>
>  - Hubert

Sorry if my ignorance of the install process is showing.  But would
going to three floppies create a new situation where systems with small
memories (think 4MB) cannot function?

I've got NetBSD running in 8MB, and I can tell you, it isn't much fun. 
Losing even more space to an MD is likely to make 4MB systems (even
more) unusable.

Or do we just not care about systems with memories less than X (FSVO X)?

--

-- 
Garrett D'Amore, Principal Software Engineer

(Continue reading)

Frederick Bruckman | 9 May 2006 04:56

Re: buildfloppies.sh: Image is 3387 bytes (3 KB) too big to fit on 2 disks

On Mon, 8 May 2006, Garrett D'Amore wrote:

> Hubert Feyrer wrote:
>> On Tue, 9 May 2006, Frederick Bruckman wrote:
>>> It sounds like a good plan..., but it doesn't sound like it'll be
>>> ready this week. What'll we do about the broken "make release", in
>>> the meantime?
>>
>> My changes won't touch that anyways.
>>
>> Possible fixes are
>>  * remove e.g. bad144
>>  * go to three floppies for bootfloppy and bootfloppy-com

"bootfloppy" is the El Torrito image, so that's currently not an 
option.

>>  * ?
>>
>> Someone decide, I don't care.

> Sorry if my ignorance of the install process is showing.  But would
> going to three floppies create a new situation where systems with small
> memories (think 4MB) cannot function?
>
> I've got NetBSD running in 8MB, and I can tell you, it isn't much fun.
> Losing even more space to an MD is likely to make 4MB systems (even
> more) unusable.
>
> Or do we just not care about systems with memories less than X (FSVO X)?

(Continue reading)

Hubert Feyrer | 9 May 2006 12:12

Picon

Re: buildfloppies.sh: Image is 3387 bytes (3 KB) too big to fit on 2 disks

On Mon, 8 May 2006, Frederick Bruckman wrote:
>>> Possible fixes are
>>>  * remove e.g. bad144
>>>  * go to three floppies for bootfloppy and bootfloppy-com
>
> "bootfloppy" is the El Torrito image, so that's currently not an option.

Wrong.
bootfloppy are two 1.44MB floppy images. bootfloppy-big is a 2.88MB floppy 
image which can be turned into a ISO image that uses floppy emulation.

  - Hubert

Tom Spindler | 9 May 2006 05:24

Re: buildfloppies.sh: Image is 3387 bytes (3 KB) too big to fit on 2 disks

I have removed bad144 from the bootfloppy-{big,small} images; the floppies
now successfully build.

Flame on!

Hubert Feyrer | 9 May 2006 04:46

Picon

Re: buildfloppies.sh: Image is 3387 bytes (3 KB) too big to fit on 2 disks

On Mon, 8 May 2006, Garrett D'Amore wrote:
> Sorry if my ignorance of the install process is showing.  But would
> going to three floppies create a new situation where systems with small
> memories (think 4MB) cannot function?
>
> I've got NetBSD running in 8MB, and I can tell you, it isn't much fun.
> Losing even more space to an MD is likely to make 4MB systems (even
> more) unusable.

Well, just because you split something on 3 floppies instead of 2 sure 
won't make it smaller. So either take out some drivers, take something 
from the ramdisk, or have it grow.

> Or do we just not care about systems with memories less than X (FSVO X)?

I think we should.

You can use Qemu to see what's the minimum amount of RAM needed to run 
stripped down kernels (GENERIC/INSTALL_SMALL/TINY).

  - Hubert

Aaron J. Grier | 10 May 2006 05:48

Re: buildfloppies.sh: Image is 3387 bytes (3 KB) too big to fit on 2 disks

On Mon, May 08, 2006 at 07:42:50PM -0700, Garrett D'Amore wrote:
> Sorry if my ignorance of the install process is showing.  But would
> going to three floppies create a new situation where systems with
> small memories (think 4MB) cannot function?
> 
> I've got NetBSD running in 8MB, and I can tell you, it isn't much fun.
> Losing even more space to an MD is likely to make 4MB systems (even
> more) unusable.
> 
> Or do we just not care about systems with memories less than X (FSVO
> X)?

on the low-end i386 tip, 
http://www.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/query-pr-single.pl?number=6986
still needs to be reopened.

next up the list of underpowered low-end boxes are the decstation 2100s,
although those can have up to 24MB RAM...

--

-- 
  Aaron J. Grier | "Not your ordinary poofy goof." | agrier <at> poofygoof.com
              "silly brewer, saaz are for pils!"  --  virt

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