passing mem= with a bootdisk, mkrescue

[Bruce Sass <bsass@edmc.net>]

Hi,

I have a box with hda=30G and hdb=854M. The 30G is not recognized so I
boot from a floppy and mount root on hdb (history and changing plans,
soon to be fixed).

I would like to move either of these drives to a different box, which
one gets moved depends on if the box they are in can see more than 64M
of RAM.  Of course I would like to find out before I start ripping out
drives and start messing with jumpers.

How do I pass mem=72M when using a bootdisk created during the
installation of a kernel built with make-kpkg?

Is there a way to tell the kernel it has more RAM after it is running?


While I am fiddling with kernels and boot disks I may as well make a
rescue disk, eh... but mkrescue doesn't work because /proc/cmdline is
empty (result of the BIOS booting the kernel directly from a floppy?).
I'm not even sure it would work to create a self contained rescue
disk.  Is mkrescue the right tool for this task?

Any advice on making a rescue disk will be appreciated.


- Bruce