[syslinux] pxelinux+memdisk experience & problem..

[tbsky at annsky.com]

> tbsky at annsky.com wrote:
>>
>>   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".
>>
>
> That should work.  What version of MEMDISK are you using?

  i try 2.06 & 2.07 pre5. try gzip the image at mandrake linux 9.1
  & mandrake linux 9.2.

>>   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..
>
> What version of PXELINUX are you running?  On what platform?  What is
> the error code displayed?

  try 2.06 & 2.07 pre5. on mandrake linux 9.1. there seems no error
code. memdisk just load fine. i try both harddisk & floppy disk images,
with freedos or win98se dos. everything works fine, but with "mem" i can
see that i got 4xx KB after a clean boot. and the total low memory is
only 5xx KB.

>
>>    3. a stupid question. can we make floppy image bigger than
>> 2.88M ? it seems not possible, but.. maybe any surprise?
>
> Sure you can.  You can make up your own format just fine.  However,
> MEMDISK won't know what geometry to use (since you made it up), so you
> have to specify the geometry on the command line.  See the memdisk
> documentation.

   that's surprise!! so we can get a big A: disk under dos? i found
it is more convinent than hardisk image. BC4 floopy disk boot won't
change the original hardisk letter order, than i can just intall new
OS to correct drive letters.

   thanks for ur information!!

Best Regards,
tbsky