Bootstrap with no bootable CD device

[Ben Smith]

Bill Somerville wrote:

>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
>
>  
>

Bill,

Unfortunately glbf doesn't support network booting at the moment.  It 
may in the future, once some of the other design goals have been achieved. 

If you can get Fedora's boot.iso image onto a fat/32 partition on the 
hard drive, the current version of glbf will let you boot from that 
image, and initiate a network install using the Fedora installer.  I 
think this would be the easiest thing to do.  The HOWTO document 
explains the process.  Basically, you would rename the boot.iso image to 
glbf.iso and place it in the root (topmost) directory of the partition.

Unfortunately, though, I have never done an install specifically this 
way.  My only concern would be whether the important bits from the 
boot.iso image are copied to memory so that the image can be overwritten 
during the install.  Perhaps someone with knowledge of the Fedora 
installer could answer that question.  If not, you would have to create 
a separate partition to contain the boot.iso image, and make sure not to 
format it during the install.

If that option is not feasible, and you do not find another solution, 
the next version of glbf will likely support booting from USB memory 
sticks.  There is a Fedora install image for those that would let you 
bootstrap to a network install if necessary.


-Ben
Dees Consulting
www.deesconsulting.com