Re: Fix make release for 4-STABLE

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Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 07:50:05 +1100
To: Dag-Erling Smørgrav <des@des.no>

On Wed, Jan 21, 2004 at 08:41:50AM +0100, Dag-Erling Smørgrav wrote:
>John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org> writes:
>> [...] I have this bad
>> feeling that there is some kind of memory corruption bug in the loader and
>> that the problem goes away if you use a loader that has forth in it.

I presume this was the trying-to-DMA-across-a-64k-boundary problem
that was fixed recently.

>why use a loader w/o forth? a complete loader with all 4th and conf
>files takes about 250k, which will definitely fit on the boot floppy,
>and with splitfs we don't need to worry about there being enough room
>for the kernel.

"goes away" doesn't mean that the problem isn't there. It just means
that there's no obvious problem in John's particular splitfs test case.
A proper fix is far preferable to masking the problem and finding the
bug is far easier when it clearly manifests itself.

FORTH in the install loader is an interesting question. Do the
benefits of FORTH in the initial install justify its size? (I don't
know the answer to this). I agree that we can do it (with the aid of
splitfs) but we don't want to unnecessarily bloat the install image.

Firstly, writing and reading floppies is painfully slow, though not
slow enough that you can usefully do something else whilst waiting.

Secondly, install image bloat translates to a higher minimum RAM
requirement and the floppy install is likely to be mostly used in
older systems which are likely to have less RAM. The last figure I
can remember is 16MB RAM (it doesn't seem to be documented in the
-RELEASE Hardware notes). The current 16MB limit means that it is
non-trivial to install FreeBSD on any normal 386-based system and
increasing it further will start biting 486-based systems. I agree
that these systems are obsolete but they are still useful as SOHO-
grade routers, simple firewalls, printservers etc.

Peter
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• Previous message: Ruslan Ermilov: "Re: buildworld and installworld"
• In reply to: Dag-Erling Smørgrav: "Re: Fix make release for 4-STABLE"
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• Reply: John Baldwin: "Re: Fix make release for 4-STABLE"
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