On stardate Thu, 4 Apr 2002, Mike Rambo wrote:
>> No, not quite (i don't think). I want to somehow, through ISOLINUX or
>> whatever, multi boot a cd with several mini-*nix distros designed to run
>> off a floppy or cd or something.
>>
>> for example, the ideal would be an aurora-like boot screen with the
>> following options"
>>
>> coyote
>> astaro
>> peanut
>> closedBSD
>> linux_router_project
>>
>> and there are more floppy distros. I thought it would be cool to have
>> all of these on one CD as a convenience.
>>
>> is this even possible?
>>
>
>Ahh.. - I think I get it. You want to be able to choose one
>of several floppy boot images on a CD, on the fly, and boot
>from any one of them? ICBW but I don't think that's
>possible. Reading the eltorito spec leaves me with the
>impression that things are of very specific sizes and in
>very specific places on a CD to make it bootable. You'd only
>be able have one actual boot image on the CD. Whether or not
>you could then hack that image to continue booting in any
>one of several different paths I don't know. While there are
>probably those out there that could pull that kind of
>programming off, I'm not one of them.
>
Hmmm... if you could do it on a hard drive, you should be able to
accomplish it using a cdrom. You would need a main boot loader then from
there you would have to put your distros in "folders" and have the
bootloader "point" to each boot image within each folder. Or something
like that. I use the nt bootloader on one of my computers to multiboot
and when I add a system, I just install the bootloader for that os to that
partition and then copy the boot.img to the place where the nt bootloader
lives.
ie.: windows lives on "c:\" and I install my linux /boot partition on
/dev/hda6. I also install lilo to /dev/hda6 and after my system is
installed, I use my boot floppy (or rescue cd) to boot into my linux I
just installed and as root dd if=/dev/hda6 of=bootsect.lnx bs=512 count=1
I then mv the bootsect.lnx to my "c:\" drive and edit my boot.ini.
Now, you can have as many of these images as you like (actually, I'm sure
there is a limit - I just don't know what it is). I think the first thing
I would begin with would be to test lilo to see if it will except paths
from the cdrom.
boot=/dev/hdc
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
vga=normal
default=Linux
keytable=/boot/us.klt
lba32
prompt
timeout=20
message=/boot/message
menu-scheme=wb:bw:wb:bw
image=/boot/folder1/vmlinuz
label=My funky Linux
root=/dev/hdc/folder1
initrd=/boot/folder1/initrd.img
append=" hdd=ide-scsi hde=ide-floppy devfs=mount mem=1024M"
read-only
image=/boot/folder2/vmlinuz
label=My other funky Linux
root=/dev/hdc/folder2
initrd=/boot/folder2/initrd.img
append=" hdd=ide-scsi hde=ide-floppy devfs=mount mem=1024M"
That's just a possibility, I don't know if it would work.
Mike
--
Michael Holt
Kirkland, WA (o_
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (o_ (o_ //\
www.holt-tech.net (/)_ (/)_ V_/_ www.mandrake.com
============================================================<
Bad or missing mouse driver. Spank the cat? (Y/N)
Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft?
Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
