To -> David Jackson Re: [ale] Is there anyone out there that fully understands the boot process ? If yes, please help...........

[David S. Jackson]

On Mon, May 19, 2003 at 10:52:08AM -0500 Courtney Thomas <ccthomas at flash.net> wrote:
> Thank you for the warning.
> 
> I don't use Slackware, but can I use any [other than 9] of it's releases 
> to accompish my goal here and have only 2 floppies, i.e. a configurable 
> one that will let me install whatever drivers I need....plus, the root 
> floppy, of course ?

I don't see why not.  It just depends whether the kernel you pick
supports your needs.  (Ie, journalling file system, oddball
hardware--like ata cards your drives might be connected to...)

> What I need is separate boot & root floppies [2] so I can configure my 
> rather baroque driver needs for the boot floppy, then simply have the 
> root floppy installed as /, i.e. as the only mounted filesystem 
> initially. And finally, can I then interact with some RedHat6.1 
> harddrives from this setup ?

As far as distros are concerned, Linux is linux; you just have to
have support for what you're using (filesystem, hardware, etc).
There are a bunch of prebuilt Slack bootdisks out there with
different goodies compiled in.  You could check Slackware.com in
the bootdisks directory to see if that fits your needs, to start
with.

If you have weird hardware/driver needs, you might just go ahead
and compile a custom kernel with all the goods rolled in
monolithically rather than as modules.  Bzip that to your boot
disk.  I haven't checked, but I would suppose the boot-disk HOWTO
shows how to make your boot floppy mount root=/dev/fd0 instead of
root=/dev/hdwhatever.  Never tried doing what the bootdisk howto
suggests.  Sounds kinda fun tho.  :-)

If this doesn't seem workable for whatever reason, you could also
use the Slack boot/root and network disks to load whatever
drivers you need over your LAN.  This has come in handy for me at
various times.

-- 
David S. Jackson                        dsj at dsj.net
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I thought there was something fishy about the butler.
Probably a Pisces, working for scale.
	-- Firesign Theatre, "The Further Adventures of Nick Danger"
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