RE: Multiple boot images for CD1
Excellent. I'll take a look at it.
Some months ago I had created several El Torito multiboot CD images, which
only worked on a few machines. That is, I was able to choose from a menu
and boot the chosen image on a few machines. Other machines had problems of
one sort or another ...
Some would show the menu, but only boot the first image no matter which one
you picked from the menu, while some would simply boot the first image right
off, no menu, no pause.
None of them actually failed to boot though, which I suppose was a good
thing :) Did you actually test booting each of the images and verify that
it booted the actual image you chose ?
Definitely get it working on the woody disks - hah I'm good at asking aren't
I ?
I still tend to think that a deskemu type solution is the way to go, since
it guarantees that the multiboot system will work on all systems. You're
booting the diskemu image as a normal single boot image, and *that* is what
presents you with the choice of bootable images. Anything that can boot
from CD will work.
--
Dean Carpenter
Principal Architect
Purdue Pharma
dean.carpenter@pharma.com
deano@areyes.com
94TT :)
-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Westveer [mailto:jwest@netnw.com]
Sent: Thursday, September 06, 2001 9:36 PM
To: debian-cd@lists.debian.org
Subject: Re: Multiple boot images for CD1
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: MD5
On Wednesday 05 September 2001 21:53, you wrote:
> On Wednesday 05 September 2001 13:28, Carpenter, Dean wrote:
> > I know the other CD's will boot other images, but I'm looking for a
Actually it appears that I am programatically-impaired.
The El Torito specifications does allow for multiple boot
images on the same CD/ROM, and so does mkisofs.
I have put together a simple script that will create a
multi-image-bootable CD. The remainder of the CD
contains only the potato boot-i386 boot disks, but it does
prove the point that we might be able to modify the way
we currently make CD#1 (i386) so that it would prompt
the user to select from one of several possible kernel-boot
configurations.
The script is located at : http://people.debian.org/~jwest/mboot-cd.sh
I will also put a test .iso image that was created from that script,
at the following location......but please wait a several hours for my
upload to complete. (I am on a real slow line) The image size
is 136511488 b so please dont down load it unless you intend
to test it and provide feedback.
ISO location: http://people.debian.org/~jwest/mboot-potato.iso
I have been pleasantly surprised that every host I have tried it
on has worked, and presents the user with a selection of possible
boot images. ( I tried it on 5 different hosts that I have)
I understand that there may be "old bios" machines that do not
support multiple El-Torito boot. I would partictularly like to know if
on one of these "old" hosts, if the image will boot at all......
If we can get this working on potato, I will update it and try
it with the new woody boot-disks, and perhaps there is still
time go get it into debian-cd for the upcomming release.
The nice thing about this approach is that it only increases
the size of CD#1 by 2.88M per additional boot image.
Comments appreciated,
- --
Jim Westveer <jwest@netnw.com>
Reply to: