[ale] Boot Floppy

[Chris Fowler]

I'll think I'll take a look at syslinux tomorrow.  The RH boot disk will
give me a good reference.  Besides, lilo loads too slow.

Chris


-----Original Message-----
From: Byron A Jeff [mailto:byron at cc.gatech.edu]
To: ale at ale.org
Sent: Tuesday, December 11, 2001 11:23 AM
To: cfowler at outpostsentinel.com
Cc: Byron A Jeff
Subject: Re: [ale] Boot Floppy


>
>
> the floppy ends up becoming an iso boot image
>
> dd if=/dev/fd0 of=/cdrom/image
>
> mkisofs -r -J -o /tmp/test.iso image /cdrom

OK. Question understood. Can you make a floppy image and use it instead
of the real deal.

No. LILO complains about the fact that you are not using a true device.
Vernard and I have been here and done that.

IIRC SYSLINUX does a better job of managing an image. Do you remember how
we did that Vee?

Everything else works. LILO is the problem. Depending on how important it is
to you, you make want to investigate the other bootloaders to see which ones
operate correctly with a file image of a floppy. I know you can do it with
a FREEDOS/LOADLIN combo. But I'm not sure if you want to go that route.

BAJ
>
>
> > >
> > > Currently I use a 1.44mb boot floppy to boot my system off CD-ROM.
> Modifying this floppy disk is time consuming due to slow nature of
> floppy drives.  Basically it is a ext2 FS with a kernel, lilo.conf,
> device nodes, and initrd
> > > image.  Is it possible to use a lopp device to create this image
> instead of a floppy disk.  Keep in mind that the lilo.conf
> states /dev/fd0 as the boot device.  Avery time I make a chage to
> initrd or kernel I issue the following
> > > command: lili -r /mnt/fd0 -c lilo.conf .
> >
> > I must ask the obvious question: Can you boot of the CD? Also do you
> have a
> > hard disk to store the boot image?
> >
> > You could set it up where LILO boots off the CD but picks up the
> kernel and
> > the image from the hard disk. I think.
> >
> > Floppies suck. End of story.
> >
> > BAJ
> >
> >
>
>




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