[syslinux] Syslinux/isolinux: is this possible?

[Jonathan Woithe]

Hello Peter

I know very little (currently) about the BIOS interfaces/APIs available at
boot time except that most of them are buggy to some extent.  However, I
have had an idea regarding another way to boot Linux and wanted to run it
past you.

As you'd be aware, many of the distributions now require multiple floppies
to hold their initial root fs to be used during installation.  I was
wondering whether it would be possible to make isolinux/syslinux boot from a
floppy but then access an initial ramdisk from a (possibly fixed) location
on a CD.  This way one can get around buggy bioses which refuse to boot from
a CD, but you don't have the inconvenience of 4 or 6 floppies when loading
that initial ramdisk.

This may be completely impossible - that's fine.  However, I thought it best
to run it past the expert in these matters before trying to do something
myself which would turn out to be impossible.

Best regards
  jonathan
-- 
* Jonathan Woithe    jwoithe at physics.adelaide.edu.au                        *
*                    http://www.physics.adelaide.edu.au/~jwoithe            *
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