Re: Adding utilities to install environment

[Marcus Watts <mdw@umich.edu>]

Erik Wilson <Erik.Wilson@NAU.EDU> writes:
...
> 1) Are the installbin files specially selected so crunchgen will produce 
> a binary which can fit on a floppy?

Yes.  Some of them are also specially *built* to squeeze them down a
bit in size.

To get ssh, you have to get the openssl libraries, which are big.  When
you get through, you're going to end up with a ramdisk image that's
quite a bit larger, so you're going to have to adjust all sorts of
filesystem sizes in several places, and you won't fit on very low end
machines anymore.  You're almost certainly going to bust the size limit
of even a 2.88M floppy, so you're going to have to build either a
"small hard disk" image, or just a straight ram load.  El Torito
supports both, but you're going to have to do something different at
least in the boot sector and perhaps elsewhere as well to make it
work.  Some of the early El Torito support didn't support all those
options, so again, you're going to loose more low-end hardware
support.  And those are just the first issues I can think of off the
top of my head.

Theo is quite right to say you are "on your own".  You've got quite an
adventure ahead of you!

				-Marcus Watts