[syslinux] Large disk image boot. Any suggestions%3

[robotti at godmail.com]

>Does anyone have any good directions for create a 32mb boot disk which
>boots to dos?  Anyone already have one and willing to share it?  Also,
>what would my PXE boot configuration look like?

This is a way to create a larger bootable DOS image.

dd if=/dev/zero of=bigdos.img bs=1M count=32
mkdosfs bigdos.img
ms-sys -f -6 bigdos.img

A 1.44MB floppy MS-DOS system usually consist of command.com, io.sys, etc.

If it's a FreeDOS system on the 1.44MB floppy image, it wouldn't work,
because ms-sys boots io.sys (not kernel.sys).

So, use a DOS or Windows9x startup floppy image, usually created
this way `sys floppy_drive:' under DOS or Windows9x.

There are premade DOS/Windows startup floppy disk images on the web
(www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm).

Mount such a 1.44MB DOS/Windows image.
mount smalldos.img /mnt/1 -o loop

Mount bigdos.img.
mount bigdos.img /mnt/2 -o loop

Copy the small DOS system to the big DOS image.
cp -a /mnt/1/* /mnt/2

umount /mnt/1 /mnt/2

You can write the bootable 30MB DOS image to a USB flash drive.
cat bigdos.img >/dev/sda

You could also use isolinux/syslinux/pxelinux and memdisk to boot bigdos.img.

label bigdos
kernel memdisk
append initrd=bigdos.img