cd booting for woody (was Re: regarding potato images)
<paulwade@greenbush.com> writes:
> I looked at El Torito a few years ago in this regard. It allows you to
> have a choice of which floppy image gets booted so there is no space
> problem. The first problem I saw at that time was a lack of support for
> this feature in mkisofs. That might be solved now in mkhybrid, but the
> bigger problem I see is that using this feature raises the bios
> compatibility requirement quite a bit. I am highly in favor of other
> techniques suggested which would initially load grub or similar boot
> systems.
I'm also in favor of it. But what I need are volunteers. Or else it
won't get done.
Someone would have to try to hack in grub support for bf (perhaps use
a top-level config switch), but not enable that by default for a bit,
so we can assess how well this works.
Although thinking about it, we could get use grub for CD booting without
in fact using grub when we're installing the new MBR on the system,
couldn't we? Aren't these different issues?
> I would say that it won't bother me a bit if lots of packages get pushed
> off of CD 1. I would love to be able to include lots of options when
> binary CD 1 is booted.
I agree. It's a pain in the butt to keep reminding users about the
various kernel flavors. Most just boot off CD 1 and have done with
it.
Furthermore, you have to then swap CDs anyhow to get the kernels and
base and such. Our system of multiple CD booting is a complete hack
and I would love to do away with it for woody.
> Besides the choice of kernels for initial install
> purposes we could have options for rescue/repair and hardware
> probing/diagnostics. I also was thinking about the timeout that causes a
> boot from the hard drive if the user fails to interact. This is nice for
> people who accidentally leave a bootable CD in a machine that they wish to
> remotely reboot but it is also desirable for certain older machines with
> stinky bios code. I have seen a few that do not have any setup option for
> disabling CD boot. With these systems if I left an NT CD in the drive I
> would get a delay(30 seconds I think) before it booted the hard drive. If
> I left a debian CD in I would get the install/rescue bootup whether I was
> at the machine or not.
That is kinda a frill, isn't it?
I think it's a syslinux thing, not a lilo thing, though.
But, if we're using grub for CD booting, couldn't we eliminate
syslinux also?
I need to get more educated on grub. So little time...
--
.....Adam Di Carlo....adam@onShore.com.....<URL:http://www.onShore.com/>
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