"DeLisle, Seth (GE Infrastructure)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> First of all let me thank Patrick and everyone who has worked on the > Unattended project. It makes the world seem like a better place ;) Positive feedback is always nice. Thank you! > I poked around in the mailing list archives and noticed that folks > have a linux based boot disk on their wishlist. I very much like a > number of the features you've talked about gaining from a linux > based boot disk, and am ready to put some effort in. To that end I > would like to check what the status of that feature is. Is anyone > working on this already? Has anyone performed any additional > experiments? I have been thinking about it this week and browsing lots of source code (especially klibc, hotplug, and autofs). I believe I have a Plan and I am going to begin work today. I realize most people do not care about a Linux boot disk, and there are lots of "more important" open bugs and feature requests. But I need to have some fun with the project. > From what I saw the features that people are interested in gaining are: > > * Install directly to an NTFS filesystem rather than using FAT as > an intermediate, then converting to NTFS and defragmenting. This is not actually a big deal anymore. I asked the FreeDOS folks about running Microsoft's OFORMAT: http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=6992940 ...and they responded by adding a new switch to FreeDOS format: http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=6993158 http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=6993161 ...which we are using in the next release: http://www.mail-archive.com/unattended-info%40lists.sourceforge.net/msg00943.html So say goodbye to 512-byte clusters. Well, for XP and above, anyway. By the way, I have decided to call the next release 3.6 and reserve 4.x for the Linux-based boot disk. (Do not worry; the DOS boot disk is not going away.) > * More flexibility with network drivers. And better reliability. > Am I missing anything that people aleady mentioned on the list? Unlike DOS, Linux is a "real" operating system with real tools. So the possibilities are endless. For example, we could add our logo to the installation screen, if we had a logo... > One feature that I hope to be able to add is the ability to host > installation data on a web server rather than mounting a network > filesystem. Should be easy if you just mean pulling stuff down using lynx or wget. Possibly harder if you mean remote-mounting a filesystem using HTTP, although http://dav.sourceforge.net/ looks promising... - Pat ------------------------------------------------------- SF.Net is sponsored by: Speed Start Your Linux Apps Now. Build and deploy apps & Web services for Linux with a free DVD software kit from IBM. Click Now! http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=1356&alloc_id=3438&op=click _______________________________________________ unattended-info mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/unattended-info
