[syslinux] El Torito/ISOLinux questions

[H. Peter Anvin]

Alexander Sack wrote:
> Hi folks,
> 
> I'm new to the list so forgive me if this topic has already been
> explained in great detail.
> 
> I'm trying to understand how an image gets booted from an EL-TORITO
> compabatible CD-ROM, so I have some general questions:
> 
> 1)  Is there a limit of how big the boot image can be?  In the
> Initial/Default entry I see a "Sector Count" which is only a word long
> in length.  Does that mean I can only load boot binary (isolinux.bin) 
> that is FFFF many sectors (about 32MB)?

128 MB actually (a CD-ROM sector is 2K).  I think you've just found the
bug someone reported a few days ago :)

> 2)  I see you can use MEMDISK with ISOLINUX.   Does that work by
> allowing ISOLINUX to load a big hard disk image off the CD-ROM and then
> boot from that?  Is that how an Linux install works?

Yes, you can, but that is not how a Linux install works.

	-hpa