Bootstrap with no bootable CD device
Bill Somerville
bill at classdesign.com
Mon Nov 8 23:17:07 UTC 2004
Thanks for the info Ben.
Ben Smith wrote:
>
> Bill Somerville wrote:
>
> >Hello
> >
> >I have Fedora Core 2 binary CD's.
> >
> >Disk 1 boots OK on another machine.
> >
> >I have a problem with two other machines.
> >
> >On one that boots other Linux distro CD's the FC2 disk 1 fails to boot
> >with messages about "winging it" then "unable to find specs".
> >
> >On another the CD has never booted anything (no BIOS support I think).
> >
> >How do I proceed? I cannot find any docs on booting from floppy.
> >
> >I have copied the distro files to an nfs share on another machine - but
> >still need some sort of bootstrap.
> >
> >TIA
> >Bill Somerville
> >
> >
> >
>
> On the one that gives errors, how much memory does it have? The Fedora
> installer requires 64 megs.
128 Mb but your solution workrd for this one anyway.
>
> On the other, there a few options. I find these to be the easiest, as
> long as you can boot from a floppy:
>
> Smart Boot Manager: http://btmgr.webframe.org/
Tried this and got confused, docs aren't too good. It doesn't seem to be
able to boot my CD-ROM.
> Generic Linux Boot Floppy: http://www.deesconsulting.com/glbf
This is better, on the machine with the sometimes bootable (but not with
FC2) CD-ROM this has got me going with a booted CD and install from
CD-ROM iso's.
For the other machine things are more complicated, I neglected to give
some critical info. It's a laptop with either CD or floppy (not both) so
a bootable floppy is only useful if a NFS install can be done (this has
always worked before) but I can't see any info for using glbf for
network bootstraps.
It looks as if I'll have to make a custom kernel and initrd for my
machine and NIC. Is it possible to build a smaller kernel that fits on a
floppy?
Any better ideas?
>
> -Ben
> Dees Consulting
> www.deesconsulting.com
TIA
Bill Somerville
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