On Sun, 28 Jun 1998 djb_at_redhat.com wrote:

> > 4) The next step is tackle booting.  The target here is to have a
> >    system that can get to the point of starting to run
> >    /coda/linuxroot/sbin/init as process ID 1.  Achieving this will be
> >    a major milestone, even if the init process immediately gets
> >    confused!
> 
> Maybe I'm missing something, but doesn't the Linux initrd facility
> handle this?  Couldn't you put your startup stuff in an initrd image
> and create your startup script as /linuxrc in the initrd?  I thought
> that this kind of thing was the point of the initrd, but I've never
> played with it enough to see if it can do what you need above...

Is there a size limit on how much can be put into initrd image?

venus is fairly big (6 megs unstripped here, probably at least a meg
stripped, and that's dynamically linked to libstdc++ and all), and unless
you use the "do BOOTP in the kernel" feature of 2.1.x, you'd need all the
networking tools too. 

For a completely diskless client, perhaps going the route of mounting root
via NFS, and then using that to bootstrap things up into action. The only
problem is, I don't know if coda will work on a diskless client with no
place to put /usr/coda/venus.cache on :)

-- Elliot					http://www.redhat.com/
Chicken Little was right.