[syslinux] Converting from isolinux to extlinux
H. Peter Anvin
hpa at zytor.com
Fri Mar 9 12:53:45 PST 2007
Dogsbody wrote:
>
> I would like to install a custom CD distribution on a system via serial
> interface (that bit I can do) but the system doesn't have a CD-ROM drive! I'm
> trying to copy the ISO to the disk and boot from that.
>
> So far I have done this...
> - Net boot the system from a server that is provided for troubleshooting
> - fdisk, wipe all partitions and create one 800MB disk
> - mkfs ext3 the partition
> - mount the partition
> - wget the iso image onto it
> - mount the iso image as loopback
> - copy the loopback image files to the partition
>
> Now the original CD used ISOLINUX as the bootloader so I *thought* I could use
> EXTLINUX to boot this partition and install the OS!?
>
> So far I have done...
> ln -s /mnt/sda1/isolinux /mnt/sda1/extlinux
> cp /mnt/sda1/extlinux/isolinux.cfg /mnt/sda1/extlinux/extlinux.cfg
That should be "extlinux.conf".
> bin/extlinux -i /mnt/sda1/extlinux
> cat syslinux-3.36/mbr/mbr.bin > /dev/sda
>
> ... bit that didn't work :-/
>
> Any hints would be welcome! :-)
Note that even if you can boot, there is no guarantee that the OS
installer will be able to deal with not coming from a CD. That's beyond
syslinux' control.
-hpa
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