[syslinux] Slightly OT: Anyone got a PXE bootable HDD low level format tool?

Wagner Ferenc wferi at niif.hu
Fri Sep 14 23:40:33 PDT 2007


"H. Peter Anvin" <hpa at zytor.com> writes:

> Andrew Stuart wrote:
>> Tim Bates wrote:
>>
>>> I just went to get the official tools, but they only have a floppy 
>>> creator (which won't help me in Linux, or without a floppy drive) and a 
>>> CD ISO. And it seems 99% of 3rd party software is unhelpfully the same 
>>> (or is a Windows program).
>
> Floppy creators are a pain in the arse.  You sometimes can run the
> floppy creator in a VM, and then run the disk image under MEMDISK.

Exactly.  I wonder why vendors prefer to hack up ad hoc "Insert disk -
press button" proggies instead of distributing the (compressed) image
files themselves or binaries which run under FreeDOS.  Or even -- why
not? -- under the SYSLINUX com32 API.  Which even has a reboot call! :)

> CD ISOs are better, at least with a CD-ROM you can run them, but they
> generally aren't netbootable.

At least the bootable CD drives really should have a common API for
memdisk to hook into, if the BIOS can access them.  Isn't this the
case?
-- 
Cheers,
Feri.




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