On 11/23/2017 09:24 AM, Anton Aylward wrote:

In my DatabaseOfDotSigQuotes I have the line:

If I still had 8" floppy drives I'd be much more concerned about hardware failures, storage capacity and performance issues than BS viruses.

I admit that 5" floppies would have fewer issues than 8" floppies, but nostalgia has its problems. Vinyl audio may be interesting and so is steam railway, but at least film photography has some colour/optical/dynamic range benefits.

I think linux-on-a-floppy is of limited interest to only a hard-core group, even more hard-core than the KDE3 group, and as such probably warrants its own ML.

I recall my first attempt at installing Linux (Yggdrasil). I had to go to a FTP site and try to figure out what packages I needed to download and then copy them to floppy. Back then my Linux reference was "The Linux Bible Gnu Testament". BTW, I recall working with 8" hard sector floppies on Data General computers. I also worked with 8" floppies on VAX 11/780 systems, but don't recall if they were hard or soft sector. I first saw 8" floppies with an IBM system, at a customer site in 1977, but didn't actually work with them. I was there to resolve a modem problem. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Richmond wrote:

Paul Groves wrote:

...

Of course it would be very impractical and also would use many floppies. But then perhaps it could be useful for some uses (although I could not imagine any).

I have an old laptop where the floppy drive and the CD ROM drive are removable modules and cannot be used at the same time. I was able to get debian installed by first installing MuLinux from floppy disks, and then booting that and copying the debian image onto the hardrive, then booting and installing that.

I forgot to mention, it cannot boot from cdrom either. The procedure sounds crazy without that crucial bit of information. :) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

jdd@dodin.org wrote:

Le 23/11/2017 à 16:09, Richmond a écrit :

...

I forgot to mention, it cannot boot from cdrom either. The procedure sounds crazy without that crucial bit of information. :)

There are way to boot from an image on disk without booting a cd, from memory using a free partition (swap?), copying the dvd/cd image there and rebooting I as even said to be manageable on a remote server, but I didn't have occasion to try them.

Yes but you need an O.S. installed to copy the image onto the disk. You can't boot from floppy and copy the cd image because you need to remove the floppy disk drive to plug the CD in, which means shutting the system down. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 11/23/2017 07:21 AM, jdd@dodin.org wrote:

Le 23/11/2017 à 16:07, Carlos E. R. a écrit :

...

Doing this for a recent distro? Would be doable, from scratch. I don't know about "converting" or using the current iso generation methodology.

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6010632 22 oct. 20:40 vmlinuz-4.4.92-31-default

do not fit on a floppy. Don't know if it's still possible to compile a kernel unde 1.4Mo :-(

It was certainly possible under certain conditions. I remember using the Linux Router Project (LRP) system for years, starting around 1998. It was a stripped down kernel with Busybox that supported the ipchains firewall system. It booted off a single 3.5" floppy and unfolded itself into RAM (128-MB in this case). The box had only the floppy transport, a motherboard, RAM, and two Ethernet NIC's. It had a vi-like editor, sshd, and ssh. It would use rsyslog to export log entries. It was a dandy system! If it ever became compromised (it never did) just reboot off of the read-only floppy and unfold a new environment into RAM. I also have a 3.5" floppy with a USB interface in my desk drawer. Haven't used it in decades... Regards, Lew -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 23/11/17 15:07, Carlos E. R. wrote:

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On Thursday, 2017-11-23 at 14:14 -0000, Paul Groves wrote:

...

Someone said to me the other day that it is possible to convert a linux install ISO, such as openSUSE, Fedora or Ubuntu and put it on floppy disks to install from directly with no CD.

Of course it would be very impractical and also would use many floppies. But then perhaps it could be useful for some uses (although I could not imagine any).

Forget about converting an entire CD to floppies, too many. What was done back in the day by SuSE was to boot the computer using floppies, as much as 3, perhaps 3 (including variants). Once the kernel and a minimal system was booted, it loaded the rest from CD or from internet.

The idea was simply to bypass a CD drive that would not boot. The idea might be expanded to a non bootable USB stick (because the BIOS did not support them), but I don't remember testing that.

If you go searching for a mirror having a SuSE 7.3 or earlier, you will see in it the floppy images. I haven't checked myself now, so the version could be wrong and you need a 6.x.

Doing this for a recent distro? Would be doable, from scratch. I don't know about "converting" or using the current iso generation methodology.

I *believe* a bootable CD still has a floppy image on it in a special place, which is what actually boots. However, the image is probably too big to fit on a real floppy :-) Cheers, Wol -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Thursday, 2017-11-23 at 18:27 +0100, gumb wrote:

On 23/11/17 15:14, Paul Groves wrote:

...

Someone said to me the other day that it is possible to convert a linux install ISO, such as openSUSE, Fedora or Ubuntu and put it on floppy disks to install from directly with no CD.

...

When Windows 8 came out, I saw an image that was going viral on either Twitter or wherever, of somebody preparing to install the floppy version. There were a few boxes with a few thousand floppy disks inside, with what looked like rather plain but believable Windows 8 branding on all the labels.

Back when floppies were the norm there were automatic floppy feeders. I don't remember the exact name of the thing, but you placed a pile of flopies and it would take them in sequence automatically. They were used to automate backups/recovers, or coupled with specialized software, to make hundreds of duplicates of a single floppy, for software sale. In this application the thing would eject bads via nother hole, and the gods got a serial number.

Here in Lyon, France, as far as I'm aware, the tramway system, inaugurated in 2001, has driver cab technology still based on Windows 3.1. It's not that many years since Microsoft ended new Windows 3.1 activations and then support of the OS altogether. Around 2001, or the couple of years before when the tramway systems here were being thrashed out, with Linux still a relative newcomer and Unix looking like it was fading away, Windows 3.1 would still have been the sort of LTS trusted reliable OS. I dearly hope they have replaced it by now but I don't know.

Someone I know was installing MsDos systems. They had paid for a development and when it came out Win 98/NT was the norm. They deployed using MsDos for groups (ie, with network support) for as long as they could, because Microsoft stoped delivery. I think he also installed Windows but booting to text mode. I don't know what they use now. I proposed freedos. In these applications the OS and its age doesn't matter: it is a closed device, one purpose only. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. (from openSUSE 42.2 x86_64 "Malachite" at Telcontar) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2 iEYEARECAAYFAloXEPkACgkQtTMYHG2NR9W2pACgis38sHMCnqbkig9ja3NQHEwd ABMAnRRLJpRcB6V9k90ME10ZMS5Ie7iZ =wPrC -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 23/11/17 19:44, Markus Koßmann wrote:

Am Donnerstag, 23. November 2017, 14:14:57 schrieb Paul Groves:

...

Someone said to me the other day that it is possible to convert a linux install ISO, such as openSUSE, Fedora or Ubuntu and put it on floppy disks to install from directly with no CD.

If he said, it was possible , he would have been right. Indeed over twenty years ago in then days of kernel 1.0.x , installation from floppy disks was an option. But nowadays there is one major technical problem with mainstream distributions : Todays installation systems don't fit on one bootfloppy.

But then do not forget the other later types of floppy: 2880kb (2.88MB) Extra-high Density (ED) 20385kb (21MB) Floptical Laser Servo (LS) 100MB / 250MB / 750MB Iomega Zip 120.375MB Superdisk (LS-120) 240.75MB Superdisk (LS-240) 200MB High Capacity Floppy Disk HiFD You might just get Ubuntu server onto a single Zip 750 :) On this topic. If anyone has any ZIP LS120 or LS240 drives or disks they no longer want I can find them a home where they will be used. (Believe it or not some businesses and gov. bodies are still using them). -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org