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Message-ID: <20040311221353.GA635@openwall.com>
Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2004 01:13:53 +0300
From: Solar Designer <solar@...nwall.com>
To: owl-users@...ts.openwall.com
Subject: Re: modules on the CD - yet another question
Hi,
> Marcin Siennicki wrote to owl-users@...ts.openwall.com:
> > this time I'm asking why there are no device drivers
> > (for SCSI controllers, NICs,...) on the CD?
There're quite some drivers compiled right into the kernel image, for
both SCSI controllers and NICs.
There're no SCSI drivers built as modules and supplied on the CD
because if we do build a disk controller driver, it better be
available right before the CD drive is first accessed by the kernel
(the CD drive may be on that controller too!) So all the SCSI drivers
for "common enough" controllers are currently compiled in.
As for NICs, yes, we could supply some pre-built drivers besides those
compiled into the kernel (although, again, most common ones are in
there). But there's nothing which prevents you from doing the same
once you have booted off the CD already.
> > I believe many people cannot install Owl with just
> > Owl CD, they are to use another linux installation
> > to mount Owl CD, destination volumes, then chroot,
> > etc...
Well, the only case where that is really required is if we're missing
a disk controller driver. And, as I have mentioned above, simply
building the driver as module and including it on the CD is not a
complete solution.
On Thu, Mar 11, 2004 at 01:07:59PM +0300, gremlin wrote:
> Sure, having the 1.4 MB for El Torito CD boot image, we are able to put
> there a really "fat" bzipped kernel,
And we already do! The current 2.4.x kernel images used on boot CDs
barely fit in the 1.44 MB floppy image (along with LILO).
We already had to drop some potentially useful stuff from default
kernels on the CDs (most notably, PCMCIA and USB support) when moving
from 2.2.x to the bigger 2.4.x kernels, also adding support for ext3.
There's really no room to add many more drivers with the current
approach. Well, maybe if we switch to using 2.88 MB "floppies", but
that would kill support for systems which can't boot off a CD and
actually require one to produce a boot floppy.
> which could carry in support for all necessary (at least frequently
> used) hardware. Most of such modules can be compiled into the kernel,
It's this way presently.
> some (conflicting like 3COM 3c5x9 and 3c90x)
I'm not sure you're correct about this pair of drivers. CONFIG_EL3
(for 3c509) and CONFIG_VORTEX (for 3c59x and 3c90x) may both be
enabled at the same time, -- and are enabled on the Owl 1.1 CDs.
> have to be built as
> external modules - but they are really needed on the installation CD.
Well, yes, it could be somewhat helpful to have some extra modules
pre-built.
A better approach might be to move all the disk controller drivers
into the 1.44 MB floppy image (either compile them into the kernel
like we do now or start using initrd), but to make that possible at
the same time remove all non-essential non-disk drivers and even
entire kernel subsystems into modules available only on the CD (not in
the floppy image). This will require more documentation and/or helper
programs to load the necessary modules when booting off the CD.
> 2 Solar: I suspect this is a good thing to do in Owl-1.2-release...
There're many good things to do...
--
Alexander Peslyak <solar@...nwall.com>
GPG key ID: B35D3598 fp: 6429 0D7E F130 C13E C929 6447 73C3 A290 B35D 3598
http://www.openwall.com - bringing security into open computing environments
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