[syslinux] Large disk image boot. Any suggestions?

[Quinn]

>You know, this brings up an interesting point...I started with the notion
>that I could just point PXE to an image and go...does this work?  If so
>why do we use MEMDISK?  Or is it that HD images work, but Floppy images
>don't?  Or do only some HD images work?
>
>Actually, when I dd'd my bootable USB to a file and had MEMDISK boot it,
>it worked.
>
>The problem I ran into was that I was trying to make a recipe for a
>customer, and the only step-by-step, repeatable way I could come up with
>was using DOSEMU to make the disk image.  I was not successful doing my
>MBR and bootblock manually as I have been with floppies.
>
>-mw
>
>  
>
You should check out qemu (use google to search).  It is much easier to 
use than dosemu and you don't need to write a config file - just do 
something like this: "qemu -fda dos710.bin -hda hdd-128mb.bin -boot a"

That would assign drive a: of a dos 7.1 floppy image called dos710.bin, 
assign the raw hdd image hdd-128mb.bin as the first hdd and boot the 
setup from the floppy image.  Making a raw hdd image is as easy as "dd 
if=/dev/zero of=hdd-128mb.bin bs=1M count=128"  It is even easier than 
vmware which you usually have to answer a lot of questions before you 
can boot your virtual machine.

Quinn