I didn't think we'd need to modify anything - the BIOS lets us choose
the floppy image we want, so each image only needs to contain a
bootloader[1], and a kernel. The root filesystem doesn't need to be
on the CD - if the disk is to be used for quickly visiting another
kernel to see if something breaks, you'd want your normal root
filesystem. If you set the root filesystem to /dev/fd0, you can
actually use a real floppy, as the kernel bypasses the BIOS floppy
emulation :-). So, you can boot from a CD, and use a floppy that
you've prepared separately as your root filesystem.
Were you suggesting that we could have the root filesystem as a set of
blocks on the CD, which are accessed directly, and not via El-Torito
floppy emulation? That would be pretty useful. Heh, initial ram disk
on a CD would be even better...
[1] I originally thought that the 2.4 kernel's in-built floppy
bootloader used BIOS calls to access the disk, and that a 2.4 kernel
image as the El-Torito boot image would work, as the kernel would be
accessing the emulated disk, but it didn't seem to when I tried it
just now - it failed with an error saying something along the lines of
it had run out of data to decompress.
> FYI I have a bootable CR/ROM (who doesn't), that contains
> a limited root file-system with ramdisks that mount on
> /tmp and /var. I use this to boot any linux machine and
> repair it. It would be nice to be able to select different
> operating system versions as well.
Yeah, maybe I was just being lazy, but I imagined something like:
make allprepatches
running the same config through 2.4.21-pre1 to -pre7, and -rc1, and
writing a CD that boots and gives you a menu to select from.
Kind of like make bzdisk, but for 2003 instead of 1991 :-).
I mean, if we're killing of the in-kernel bootloader in 2.5, why not?
John.
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