John said: > On Wed, 11 Jun 2003, Mike Smith wrote: > > >> All, >> >> I'm new to the list. However I'm not new to kickstart. >> >> I'm not too sure why the boot disks were changed away from boot.img and >> bootnet.img. If you can make me see the light, then cool. But from where I sit, it >> seems like a bad idea! > > Too much stuff for the floppy image. You can (I think) use a CD. > I can't. I maintain a slew of servers around the world. And dealing with not the most technically advanced people manning a 24/7 center, I opt to make it simple. They receive an image from me and rawrite. They save them both down and create the disk. Stick it in and wait for the nice beeps and message at the end. Then they pop out the disk and reboot. Nice 15 min rebuild of ANY mission critical machines. Could you imagine if I had to walk them through how to create a bootable cd and the likes. Only to find out they were trying to burn to a cd-rom and not a cdr :) Seriously. The old way was better. And I've gotten a few comments off the list from this thread and people don't want this going away. The floppy isn't dead and will be around for some time. Sorry :) > A SINGLE disk worked for some (most) cases, but not all, without some of > the fiddling you've been doing. It should still work for those of us that CAN build our custom images. I'm sure a lot of the problems people had out there probably shouldn't have been attempting to build a custom disk until they were a little more up on linux. > A good alternative is to build a kernel with the driver builtin, not as > a module. While you're at it, turn it for your specific requirements. > There's also a better chance you'll get what you want on ne floppy. I'd have to disagree on this one too....Static kernels are not the way to get around this. I mean, what's the point of having modules then??? :) Automation of building a static kernel based on info in a MySQL database would be a night mare. However building a custom ks.cfg based on the info you pull isn't so bad :) > I'm past caring: I've moved most of my stuff to Debian and don't expect > to be doing more RHL installs. Debian's also given me new freedom in > hardware choice: runs on pretty much any hardware I can find. I may look in to that....Thanks for the info. I assume they have a network build option as well?? > What should solve your difficulties is the Etheroot project. You can put > bootrom software on floppy and use it ti load a kernel+initrd off the > network. Doesn't do PXE, but shouldn't be too hard to get working. > > See http://www.etherboot.org/ http://rom-o-matic.net/ > http://www.thinguin.org/ Thanks for the info. I'll take a look. - Mike
