Boot from memory-stick?

[Jim Cornette]

Timothy Murphy wrote:

>Kevin J. Cummings wrote:
>
>  
>
>>I used to use something called BOOT.SYS in combination with BOOTLIN.COM,
>>a windows 95 device driver and an MS-DOS program that you could use in
>>your CONFIG.SYS file to present a menu to boot from.  The top of my
>>CONFIG.SYS file used to look like this:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>DEVICE  = C:\DRIVERS\BOOT.SYS /T5
>>>
>>>DEVICE  = BOOT.1 LINUX
>>>SHELL   = C:\COMMANDS\BOOTLIN.COM C:\LINUX\VMLINUZ
>>>
>>>DEVICE  = BOOT.2 OLD LINUX
>>>SHELL   = C:\COMMANDS\BOOTLIN.COM C:\LINUX\VMLINUZ.OLD
>>>
>>>DEVICE  = BOOT.3 NEW LINUX
>>>SHELL   = C:\COMMANDS\BOOTLIN.COM C:\LINUX\VMLINUZ.NEW
>>>
>>>DEVICE  = BOOT.4 MS-DOS
>>>BUFFERS = 20
>>>FILES   = 40
>>>      
>>>
>
>Is that what the OP wanted?
>
>Personally, I would just like to know if anyone has used a memory stick
>in the same way as one can use a CD, after running "mkbootdisk --iso ..."
>and burning the ISO image onto the CD.
>
>Can one just say something like "mkbootdisk --device /mnt/memstick ..."?
>Is that likely to work?
>(I can't try this on my Sony Picturebook laptop,
>since I can't boot from USB.
>But I'm interested to know how I would do it if I could!)
>
>
>  
>
I believe the image would transfer to the memstick alright. I would 
imagine that the booting would panic once the kernel took over unless 
you added the steps and tricks that those booting from usb-hardrives are 
taking to add the usb modules to the initrd image. This sounds like 
another good reason to add usb modules to the kernel by default.

No claim for accuracy or fact,

Jim

-- 
Technology is dominated by those who manage what they do not understand.