I'll try to help...
> > I'm wondering if it is possible to boot into Linux from compact flash.
It's not hard at all. It only took me a morning to get it going. It all
depends whether you know a couple of tricks ( I think!).
> > * A direct copy using 'dd' from a boot floppy to the CF.
The boot sector of the floppy, and all the other filesystem info is set up for
the floppy drive. LILO uses sectors, cylinders, etc. and BIOS calls so must be
run on the compact flash
I'll try to explain what I do to produce a CF image:
1/ Put CF as /dev/hdb for example
2/ Create boot partition on CF, make filesystem and copy my kernel, etc. onto
this
3/ Make my main partition and filesystem, copy my various distribution
contents to this (Chroot to this partition to make sure it is hunkdory)
4/ Have a lilo2.conf with something like:
boot=/dev/hdb
disk=/dev/hdb
bios=0x80
map=/mnt/map
linear
default=linux
image=/mnt/bzImage
label=linux
read-only
5/ Mount boot partition under /mnt/
6/ lilo -C lilo2.conf
7/ Remove CF, move to another machine as primary master and boot up
linear addressing is required for CFs
bios=0x80 tells lilo to write boot sector as if the disk was primary master so
that the boot sector will work with the CF as primary master
A good tip though is to try this with a normal IDE drive. This ensures you are
confident you distribution works before blaming the Compact Flash.
Hope this helps,
Malcolm.
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