[syslinux] pxelinux+memdisk experience & problem..

[tbsky at annsky.com]

hi:
  i try to make some images for pxelinux+memdisk.
the version i try is 2.0.6 and 2.0.7pre5

  for 2.88M floppy image, first i make a 1.44M boot floopy,
then use "winimage" to load the disk and transfer it to
2.88M format, then save the image. it seems a easy way to make
a 2.88M boot image.

  for harddisk image, i use vmware to build a virtual machine
with 20M harddisk, make it boot and put everything on it. then
boot this machine with Mandrake cdrom, enter rescue mode, make
a ramdisk(mkfs.ext2 /dev/ram0;mount /dev/ram0 /mnt/disk), dd the
harddisk(dd if=/dev/hda of=/mnt/disk/hd.img), ftp hd.img to server.

  both images works fine with pxelinux+memdisk. but i got some little
problems.

  1. i try gzip the image. but memdisk complain about
"bad gzip magic number" and refuse to load. myabe i m doing
something wrong. my procedure is  "gzip dos.img" and get
"dos.img.gz". then  i rename "dos.img.gz" to "dos.img".

  2. memdisk eat 70-100K low memory. i read from archive it's
because i got a "broken pxe stack" so memdisk can not release.
but i try several pxe bootable desktop & notebook, including
emboot pxe boot disk for vmware. none can release the memory.
so maybe someone can give a clue what pxe stack is good,
then i can give it a try and make sure what's the problem..

   3. a stupid question. can we make floppy image bigger than
2.88M ? it seems not possible, but.. maybe any surprise?

   thanks for any advice!!

Best Regards,
tbsky