[syslinux] Adding memdisk or similar when booting linux

[Kjetil.Mikkelborg at kongsberg.com]

Ok, just to reply to my own post :)

I checked linux.h, and saw the obvius, this could really be done like hpa said here, with a nice clean com32 module.

But, Is this the best way of achiving this? since making a com32 module for parsing driver disk information, and adding to initramfs actually is more usefull than only for syslinux? Should'nt this probably be made with atleast someone from redhat to ensure that for future releases, driverdisk model could include load support from install enviroment? (that offcourse actually is syslinux today (Atleast for preboot)) but how can this be implemented the most clean way (and has someone allready implemented it?)

--Kjetil

-----Original Message-----
From: syslinux-bounces at zytor.com [mailto:syslinux-bounces at zytor.com] On Behalf Of Kjetil.Mikkelborg at kongsberg.com
Sent: 14. mars 2008 10:24
To: syslinux at zytor.com
Subject: Re: [syslinux] Adding memdisk or similar when booting linux

>Kjetil.Mikkelborg at kongsberg.com wrote:
>> Hi
>>
>> Thanx guys for the help on understanding howto read dmi info!
>> I now have a custom boot menu for install of different linux versions based if they have been installed before (reinstall is ok for users, first install is not), and >installquirks like if we detect odd hardware, we add install options to redhat installer so it can install anyhow (for instance hp dc7800 who needs pci=nommconf as kernel >append for booting).
>>
>> But now I need to add a driver disk to my install enviroment, and when thinking about it, the nice method would be having syslinux create a memdisk which linux could see >when starting install, and load its drivers from there. The reason i need a memdisk image (or similar), is since often the driver I need is a network driver, which >offcourse is a tad difficult getting from the net _After_ the kernel have taken over.
>>
>> Embedding the initrd would be an option, but would require me to change all install initrd's for every driver I put in my driver disk, and also it would require me to >also allways modify new releases with custom initrd. But with a memdisk approach, the only image who would need attention would be the driver disk image alone (which >actually supports multi versions)
>>
>> Is there any clean approches to achive this? like starting first memdisk, load a image to it, and then start linux (all thru pxelinux?)
>>
>
>Writing a COM32 module to construct an initramfs on the fly might be the
>best of all worlds.  That way the COM32 module can download the specific
>drivers it needs.
>
>The library support for that is already there.
>
>        -hpa


Is there anyway i can keep redhats initramfs image, and load a second one?

If not, I really would need to ensure that the initramfs could hold both redhats data, and my driverdisk data. But still this is much cleaner than jumping from memdisk to syslinux and so on. How does actually initramfs handle this? can it be dynamicly enlarged? with this scenario, the initramfs could with no problem be twice and tripple the original size.

And if i really can have a second initramfs, how do i access it?

--Kjetil


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