[syslinux] kernel and initrd

H. Peter Anvin hpa at zytor.com
Tue May 18 20:12:50 PDT 2004


Steve Glines wrote:
> The situation is this. The client has asked me to create this lab using
> a special card that they have that acts like a remote console. It allows 
> a remote user to boot from their local floppy or a pseudo floppy (stored 
> elsewhere) - there is no provision for a CD or changing pseudo floppies. 
> The goal is to simulate an install via CD rom.
> 
> As far as I know all of the target machines will (these are different
> from what I'm developing on) have 3c509 cards without a PXE rom so I
> still need to boot off a floppy.
> 
> I once had a floppy (I can't find it now that I need it) that booted a
> remote version of Red Hat's anaconda. It was a pure syslinux
> implementation that installed the right net driver, did a dhcp request,
> then prompted you for the URL of an anaconda implementation which I
> think ftp'd the code into a ramdisk and installed Red Hat from there.
> 
> I'm trying to do the same thing but make it more generic. I just wish I
> knew where that floppy was so that I could reverse engineer it.
> 
> Your idea of pxelinux is a good one. I didn't see a way to boot
> etherboot from a floppy - am I wrong here? Can I use the zdisk the same
> way I would use a vmlinuz?
> 

I believe the zdisk file *is* a floppy disk image that you can dd to a 
floppy drive, but I'm not 100% sure; I'm not an Etherboot expert.

You need a very recent Etherboot in order for it to work like a PXE stack.

	-hpa




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