[syslinux] Selecting hard disk boot when running syslinux from floppy

[H. Peter Anvin]

Giulio Orsero wrote:
> 
> I'm not sure if this is the same thing you're talking about, but if the hard
> disk already have a boot loader on it (ie: lilo), can't you chainload the
> 512 boot sector directly?
> 
> dd if=/dev/hda of=bootsect.bs bs=512 count=1
> 
> kernel bootsect.bs
> 
> I used this to build remote systems (I could not put floppy in and out)
> starting them from floppy and then rebooting them from HD (with the syslinux
> floppy still inside), then from HD I could edit syslinux.cfg and have it
> rebooted from floppy, and so on.
> 

This *can* work, but it isn't guaranteed to work because the DL register
will contain the wrong drive number.  It works for LILO, I'm pretty
sure, but may not work for other systems.

	-hpa