Re: Booting from USB floppy?

H. Peter Anvin (hpa@zytor.com)
11 Aug 2001 22:19:05 -0700

Followup to: <E15VlgK-0005GO-00@trixia.ai.mit.edu>
By author: Chris Hanson <cph@zurich.ai.mit.edu>
In newsgroup: linux.dev.kernel
>
> I have been trying to build Debian 2.2 boot/root floppies for the HP
> OmniBook 500 laptop, which (in some configurations) has only a USB
> floppy drive. I've been unable to get the kernel to load the root
> floppy. These tests were done using Linux 2.4.6.
>
> At this point, I think this isn't possible without some real work in
> the kernel. I'd like to get some feedback about whether this is a
> correct deduction. To that end, here is my analysis.
>

Basically, this is yet another reason why THE FLOPPY DRIVE MAGIC
STUFF IN THE KERNEL IS OBSOLETE AND BROKEN. There is absolutely no
sane reason to keep that crap around; the only sane way is to have an
initrd or similar thing (like viro's initramfs) set up a ramfs
initialized from whatever; the floppy stuff in the kernel should just
be nuked.

-hpa

-- 
<hpa@transmeta.com> at work, <hpa@zytor.com> in private!
"Unix gives you enough rope to shoot yourself in the foot."
http://www.zytor.com/~hpa/puzzle.txt	<amsp@zytor.com>
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