--- Begin Message ---
- To: Adam Di Carlo <adam@onshore.com>
- Subject: hd.img loop
- From: bbennet <bbennet@mb.sympatico.ca>
- Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 18:34:03 -0600 (CST)
- Message-id: <Pine.LNX.3.96.1010328181821.745A-100000@ComputerHelperGuy>
Hello to adam.
I have been installing Mandrake cooker lately.
It has been very fast.
I think you should know about what it can do.
There are three floppy image files you can choose.
cd.img
will make a floppy that looks for CDROM, any cdrom.
net.img
will do network installs.
hd.img
will look for your archive or CD iso image file.
-----------------
The hd.img floppy:
it stops at a boot: prompt and lets you look at help with F-1 or enter
in your kernel boot prompts.
Then it boots linux.
Then the install shell stops and nails you with
"on what device is your archive or CD image located?"
then you have to choose your disk
/dev/hda
or
/dev/hdb (it will move along if only one disk is present)
This is good because it depends on linux detection and not the bios.
You do not have to tell the bios about the linux drive.
You can have an invisible drive that windos does not know about but
linux will be able to use.
The next step of that shell is it stops with
"on what partition of the device is your archive or CD image located?"
then you have to know the partition.
it lists your partitions on that device.
this is good, it stops the blank-stare-folks.
The next step of that shell is it stops with
"in what directory is your archive or CD image located"
then you have to know the top directory/root directory.
Then you can (1) Accept, (2) Cancel, (3) Redo
and you have to press a number.
It then goes ahead and uses your archive for the rest of the install
shell.
The reason I send you this is that the CD image is mounted with the
loopback device.
insmod loop (or maybe it is built-in)
mount /the/given/directory/filename.iso /some/dir -t iso9660 -o loop
This is one heckuva fast CDROM when you use your disk drives.
Plus the folks can just get a CD image and put it on any old file system
and it is usable. As long as we have that filesystem ability, of course.
I hope that you can give this a thought.
Cheers, Bill Bennet.
"Where the only monopoly we support has a Boardwalk and a Baltic Avenue."
--- End Message ---