FreeBSD 7.1-RC2 Available...

[Oliver Fromme]

Hi Julian,

Julian Stacey wrote:
 > Martin wrote:
 > > "SDH Admin" <admin at stardothosting.com> wrote:
 > > > Try burning new cd media and/or try another cd-rom drive if possible,
 > > > if the acpi/dma doesn't work.
 > > 
 > > I've tried that already with RC1. I've burned it multiple times and
 > > tried 3 drives. It seems someone removed CD emulation boot from the
 > > livefs CD. It won't work with older PCs anymore. I'm using 8.0-CURRENT
 > > now, but I wanted to give you people a notice. Sometimes a live CD is
 > > useful and perhaps you won't be able to boot it anymore.
 > > 
 > > I just realized that the CD is not booting on older PCs only, that's
 > > why noone is really concerned about it here, perhaps thinking that I'm
 > > not able to burn an ISO or something like that. But I can definitely
 > > boot 8-CURRENT livefs without problems, so at least it's not a drive
 > > problem.
 > 
 > Nasty ! Even though some of us on lists might know to guess & avoid
 > or ask about this, it seems an un-necessary pain as CDROM is only
 > half full.  I recall people got caught last time FreeBSD CDs didnt
 > have both boot methods.  Maybe whoever removed the code didnt know
 > that ?  Hopefully someone could put it back so FreeBSD doesn't look
 > broken to some machines & people ?

In theory you can have multiple boot methods on the same
CD (this is supported by the "ElTorito" standard), but in
practice many BIOS implementations fail miserably at it.

Therefore it is better to use only one boot method, and
the "no emulation" boot method is well supported by today's
machines.  As far as I can tell, all other major operating
systems use it, including the ones from Redmond, so it will
likely work in the foreseeable future.  Apart from that,
the "no emulation" mode is more flexible because you're not
limited to the size of a floppy for the boot image.
I think the latter is the main reason why FreeBSD abandoned
the "floppy emulation" boot method.

I think FreeBSD used the "floppy emulation" boot method
up until 4.x.  So if you have really old hardware that
doesn't support "no emulation" mode, it might be a good
idea to keep an old CD around for rescue purposes.

Best regards
   Oliver

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"Python tricks" is a tough one, cuz the language is so clean. E.g.,
C makes an art of confusing pointers with arrays and strings, which
leads to lotsa neat pointer tricks; APL mistakes everything for an
array, leading to neat one-liners; and Perl confuses everything
period, making each line a joyous adventure <wink>.
        -- Tim Peters