Discussion on the future of floppies in 5.x and 6.x

[Nicolas Rachinsky]

* Richard Coleman <richardcoleman at mindspring.com> [2004-01-09 20:59 -0500]:
> Richard Coleman wrote:
> >I apologize if this is a dumb question.  But rather than using two 
> >floppies during the install process, why not three or four?
> >
> >Richard Coleman
> >richardcoleman at mindspring.com
> 
> Sorry, I just got caught up on the list, and see that this has already 
> been discussed.  Ignore the question.

I'm not sure that the question is dumb. I think
/usr/src/lib/libstand/splitfs.c should work for this. From the commit
message of it:
|Add splitfs vfs layer into libstand, which allows loading big kernels
|and
|modules split across several physical medias. Following is how it
|works:
|
|The splitfs code, when asked to open "foo" looks for a file
|"foo.split"
|which is a text file containing a list of filenames and media names,
|e.g.
|
|        foo.aa "Kernel floppy 1"
|        foo.ab "Kernel floppy 2"
|        foo.ac "Kernel and modules floppy"
|
|For each file segment, the process is:
|
|- try to open the file
|- prompt "Insert the disk labelled <whatever> and press any key..."
|- try to open the file
|- return error if file could not be located

I just took the 4.9-RELEASE install disks and splited mfsroot.gz into
two files put them onto two disks. They booted without any problem to
sysinstall.

So it seems the code to use more disks is already there.

Nicolas