[TUHS] Pre-init initialization

[Grant Taylor]

On 8/9/19 6:23 PM, Theodore Y. Ts'o wrote:
> In '95, Slackware started releasing on CD-ROM's, and while there may 
> have been boot/root floppies, I suspect more and more they were used as 
> rescue media, since installing from a CD-ROM was *way* more convenient.

The boot & root floppies were how you booted Slackware for a long time. 
The CD-ROM was unbootable for quite a while.  You booted off of floppy 
and the installation scripts would ask you which drive had the CD-ROM in 
it to mount and install from.

> I'm guesing what you were doing was creating a kernel plus initramfs 
> which was sufficient to mount a root file system elsewhere as an 
> emergency "boot this failsafe kernel off the floppy", perhaps? 
> I don't think a kernel+initramfs on a single 1.44MB floppy would 
> have been sufficient for use as an install medium by '99.  Or were 
> you making an emergency USB thumb-drive as a rescue device, maybe?

It was a re-roll of the above boot & root disk set.  It was not rescue 
media per-say.  Though the standard boot & root disk set did get used 
for rescue purposes in addition to installation.



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die

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