[syslinux] Request for enlightenment..

[Ian McDonald]

Luciano Rocha wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 05, 2007 at 12:07:14PM +0100, Ian McDonald wrote:
>   
>> I figure I'm probably trying to do something stupid, but here goes.
>>
>> I'm trying to boot a hard disk image (with one 420MB partition, lilo in 
>> the MBR) containing debian etch (kernel 2.6.18) using memdisk (onto a 
>> dell 2950 with 8G of ram).
>>
>> Lilo (22.6.1) fails on memdisk 3.35, 3.36, 3.50, 3.51, and 3.52-pre, 
>> with L 99 99 99 99 et al, but works on 2.x, 3.00 and 3.31.
>>
>> However, the kernel fails to snag the emulated hard disk, and fails to 
>> boot past it's initramfs as it can't find the rootfs.
>>     
>
> Correct. The Linux kernel and new (from the last decade) operating
> systems ignore the BIOS and access the hardware directly. The HDD you're
> emulating with memdisk is available to lilo (or should be), because lilo
> uses BIOS calls to access the disk.
>
> However, the kernel will never see it, as it accesses the hardware
> directly.
>
>   

I did kind of wonder if there was a way of getting the kernel to look at 
the bios information.

Aside from the above, I'm still not sure why Lilo fails on memdisk newer 
than 3.31.

--
ian