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  • Re: Total removal of floppy support?

    From John Paul Adrian Glaubitz@21:1/5 to Cyril Brulebois on Wed Jan 18 15:50:01 2023
    Hi Cyril!

    On 1/18/23 15:28, Cyril Brulebois wrote:
    While working on extending firmware support, I've stumbled upon floppy support in various components. Even if the maintenance costs are low, I suppose this could go away nowadays?

    Not sure. It depends on whether it can still be useful for loading a kernel
    for network booting.

    Can we get an overview what floppy support includes? If it's just a few files, I'm inclined to keep it for now and I'm also happy to care of it in case it needs some love.

    Adrian

    --
    .''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
    : :' : Debian Developer
    `. `' Physicist
    `- GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546 0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Cyril Brulebois@21:1/5 to All on Wed Jan 18 15:30:01 2023
    Hi,

    While working on extending firmware support, I've stumbled upon floppy
    support in various components. Even if the maintenance costs are low, I
    suppose this could go away nowadays?


    Cheers,
    --
    Cyril Brulebois (kibi@debian.org) <https://debamax.com/>
    D-I release manager -- Release team member -- Freelance Consultant

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  • From Cyril Brulebois@21:1/5 to All on Wed Jan 18 16:00:01 2023
    Hi,

    John Paul Adrian Glaubitz <glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de> (2023-01-18):
    On 1/18/23 15:28, Cyril Brulebois wrote:
    While working on extending firmware support, I've stumbled upon floppy support in various components. Even if the maintenance costs are low, I suppose this could go away nowadays?

    Not sure. It depends on whether it can still be useful for loading a kernel for network booting.

    Can we get an overview what floppy support includes? If it's just a few files,
    I'm inclined to keep it for now and I'm also happy to care of it in case it needs some love.

    Could you give a few more details about that “loading a kernel for
    network booting” scenario? What I'm looking at is debian-installer
    searching and finding files (itself, d-i components, firmware packages,
    etc.) on floppies…


    Cheers,
    --
    Cyril Brulebois (kibi@debian.org) <https://debamax.com/>
    D-I release manager -- Release team member -- Freelance Consultant

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  • From John Paul Adrian Glaubitz@21:1/5 to Cyril Brulebois on Wed Jan 18 16:10:01 2023
    On 1/18/23 15:56, Cyril Brulebois wrote:
    Could you give a few more details about that “loading a kernel for
    network booting” scenario? What I'm looking at is debian-installer searching and finding files (itself, d-i components, firmware packages,
    etc.) on floppies…

    Ah, I forgot about loading firmware from floppy disks. This is actually
    a valid use case for alpha and hppa, for example.

    Adrian

    --
    .''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
    : :' : Debian Developer
    `. `' Physicist
    `- GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546 0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Cyril Brulebois@21:1/5 to All on Wed Jan 18 16:40:01 2023
    John Paul Adrian Glaubitz <glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de> (2023-01-18):
    Ah, I forgot about loading firmware from floppy disks. This is actually
    a valid use case for alpha and hppa, for example.

    With non-free-firmware being allowed on installation images, the plan is
    to drop support for loading firmware from external storage anyway, which
    has proven to be confusing users anyway.


    Cheers,
    --
    Cyril Brulebois (kibi@debian.org) <https://debamax.com/>
    D-I release manager -- Release team member -- Freelance Consultant

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  • From Bastian Blank@21:1/5 to Cyril Brulebois on Wed Jan 18 21:40:01 2023
    Hi Cyril

    On Wed, Jan 18, 2023 at 03:28:25PM +0100, Cyril Brulebois wrote:
    While working on extending firmware support, I've stumbled upon floppy support in various components. Even if the maintenance costs are low, I suppose this could go away nowadays?

    It can completely go in the installer. There is no useful way to use
    floppies still.

    The kernel needs to retain support for access floppy devices. But even
    it can't use floppies to boot.

    Bastian

    --
    To live is always desirable.
    -- Eleen the Capellan, "Friday's Child", stardate 3498.9

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)