Bootstrap with no bootable CD device

[Bill Somerville]

Thanks for the info Ben.

Ben Smith wrote:
> 
> Bill Somerville wrote:
> 
> >Hello
> >
> >I have Fedora Core 2 binary CD's.
> >
> >Disk 1 boots OK on another machine.
> >
> >I have a problem with two other machines.
> >
> >On one that boots other Linux distro CD's the FC2 disk 1 fails to boot
> >with messages about "winging it" then "unable to find specs".
> >
> >On another the CD has never booted anything (no BIOS support I think).
> >
> >How do I proceed? I cannot find any docs on booting from floppy.
> >
> >I have copied the distro files to an nfs share on another machine - but
> >still need some sort of bootstrap.
> >
> >TIA
> >Bill Somerville
> >
> >
> >
> 
> On the one that gives errors, how much memory does it have?  The Fedora
> installer requires 64 megs.

128 Mb but your solution workrd for this one anyway.

> 
> On the other, there a few options.  I find these to be the easiest, as
> long as you can boot from a floppy:
> 
> Smart Boot Manager:   http://btmgr.webframe.org/

Tried this and got confused, docs aren't too good. It doesn't seem to be
able to boot my CD-ROM.

> Generic Linux Boot Floppy:   http://www.deesconsulting.com/glbf

This is better, on the machine with the sometimes bootable (but not with
FC2) CD-ROM this has got me going with a booted CD and install from
CD-ROM iso's.


For the other machine things are more complicated, I neglected to give
some critical info. It's a laptop with either CD or floppy (not both) so
a bootable floppy is only useful if a NFS install can be done (this has
always worked before) but I can't see any info for using glbf for
network bootstraps.

It looks as if I'll have to make a custom kernel and initrd for my
machine and NIC. Is it possible to build a smaller kernel that fits on a
floppy?

Any better ideas?

> 
> -Ben
> Dees  Consulting
> www.deesconsulting.com

TIA
Bill Somerville