livecds in the future

[Peter Jones]

On 11/24/2009 04:07 PM, Sir Gallantmon wrote:

> If there are systems that cannot boot to USB, why not offer a boot disc that
> would automatically search for USB drives, offer a list of bootable USB
> drives, and allow the user to select one to boot from?

Not that I actually believe in these systems that are i686 or newer and won't
boot off of usb-storage devices, but if they were to exist, you wouldn't be
able to do what you're saying on them.

When the bootloader is running, it can only see devices BIOS provides to it.  If
a system can't boot off of a usb-storage device, it's because the BIOS isn't
enumerating it.  So it's not a case of "we can start from another device and
then look at the device we meant to be using" - you can't see the device at all,
regardless of your starting point.

-- 
        Peter

I hope you know that this will go down on your permanent record.