Dear Bob et al,
Robert Findlay wrote:
>
> For the past year or so we've been involved in migrating several legacy QNX
> applications over to Linux/RTLinux. Typically these are embedded PC 486
> systems with rotating IDE hard drives. The BIOS's on these older boards
> do not allow for autodetection of the C/H/S values for the drive and
> therefore must be entered in the BIOS setup.
>
> To aid with the migration to Linux we adopted a frame/cartridge system from
> CRU which allows us to very easily swap the box back and forth between the
> existing QNX drive and the developmental Linux drive.
>
> The problem is that unless we get identical C/H/S values for the two hard
> drives we are bothered by having to reset the BIOS parameters for each swap.
>
> My question is:
> "Is there a way to avoid this with the Linux OS? ie. leave the BIOS set for
> the QNX drive and have the different Linux drive also boot without having
> to enter the BIOS and change things"
>
> The more I discover about the Linux boot sequence "onion" the closer I
> think I'm coming to an answer. I recently came across the lilo.conf
> "append" parameter which in conjunction with the "hd=" bootparam should be
> able to do the trick. The problem is that without the correct BIOS C/H/S
> values my machines never seem to get anywhere near lilo.
I also use a frame/cartridge system with some older machines.
The Quick & Dirty technique is to create a DOS Boot floppy and
use the loadlin parameter. Then boot from the floppy
in your autoexec.bat enter the following line as your last
line of your autoexec.bat file:
A:\LOADLIN\LOADLIN A:\LOADLIN\VMLINUZ root=/dev/hda2 hd=cyl,head,sect ro
vga3
where VMLINUZ is a copy of your kernel on the Linux HD that has been
copied to your floppy drive. You can copy it to your floppy using the
mcopy utility in LINUX.
Of course LOADLIN.EXE must be in your A:\LOADLIN directory to be
used as listed above.
On every LINUX HD I have I always leave a DOS boot partition so
I can select between different kernels using the MENU capabilities
in the boot process. This way I can boot with an RT kernel when
required or drop back to a regular kernel for all other tasks.
> Any help/advice would be appreciated.
> Robert D. Findlay
> Senior Software Engineer
> FC software Inc.
> Tel: (905)659-0512
> email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: www.netcom.ca/~fcsoft
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Regards,
Gerry Kokodyniak
--
Realtime Testing Technologies Inc. Gerald William Kokodyniak
2336 Bloor Street West, P.O. Box 84560 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M6S 1T0 http://www.realtimetest.com/
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