[K12OSN] how to create etherboot CD

[Eric Harrison]

On Fri, 10 Feb 2006, Petre Scheie wrote:

>
>
> Les Mikesell wrote:
>> On Fri, 2006-02-10 at 13:26, Petre Scheie wrote:
>> 
>>>> I hacked someone else's CD image, don't remember the exact details (it
>>>> is in the archives...).
>>>> 
>>>> Give this a spin:
>>>> 
>>>> ftp://k12linux.mesd.k12.or.us/pub/K12LTSP/testing/eb_pci.iso
>>>> 
>>>> -Eric
>>> Well, that works a bit better than my CDs: FreeDOS seems to load, and I get 
>>> the screen full of dots (is this the tftp stage?), ending in 'done'.  But 
>>> then the next line says 'Issuing RESET:' and it just hangs there.
>> 
>> That one works for me in an old Capuccino mini-book PC.  The dots
>> should be the tftp part and after the 'done' you should get
>> something like
>> mknbi-1.4.0/first32.c (GPP)
>> Top of ramdisk is 0X07EE0000.
>> 
>> --
>>  Les Mikesell
>>    les at futuresource.com
>> 
> Perhaps it's just a problem with the Dell Optiplex I tested it on.  The 
> machine this is actually for, a Micron (does Micron even make PCs any more?) 
> is at another site, so I'll take the CD there this weekend and try it. 
> Interestingly, I tried the PXES bootable CD in the Dell, choosing XDM at the 
> boot menu, and it works just fine, boots up the login screen from the server 
> in just a few seconds.
>
> (BTW Eric, I tried to google for your original messages about the CD but 
> couldn't find any.)

I thought there was a message detailing the changes I made. Doesn't
appear to be the case (and I can't remember much about it, probably
just a simple dos batch file edit).

Here's the original post, grep didn't turn up anything else in my
mailbox. Maybe more in the thread in the list archives....


-------------

Message-ID: <423F2C2A.5050507 at mail.mesd.k12.or.us>
Date: Mon, 21 Mar 2005 12:18:50 -0800
From: Eric Harrison <eharrison at mail.mesd.k12.or.us>
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To: "Support list for opensource software in schools." <k12osn at redhat.com>
Subject: Re: [K12OSN] universal etherboot iso?
References: <8883FBEA06AD6D4CB9C780772C08E282119F56 at goodwill1.goodwill.lan> <1111435379.15579.38.camel at moola.futuresource.com>
In-Reply-To: <1111435379.15579.38.camel at moola.futuresource.com>

Les Mikesell wrote:
> On Mon, 2005-03-21 at 12:46, David H. Barr wrote:
>
>
>>>image to start with.  What's an eb2hd?   The reason I need this is
>>
>>[snip]
>>
>>
>>>I want to be able to load other things on the HD.
>>
>>Etherboot to (2) Hard Disk: http://etherboot.anadex.de/  It's what I used
>>to set up my 5-station test lab.  I downloaded the floppy image, then used
>>Nero to burn a bootable CD of it.
>
>
> That worked in terms of k3b accepting it as a boot image and making a
> bootable iso.  However, it wants to install a copy on the HD and all I
> want to do is netboot directly WDXB2500JBRNNfrom the iso.  I think the
> difference is that the eb2hd floppy image uses freedos/syslinux to boot
> where the floppy I want to use is just like an etherboot ROM image with
> no separate loader - and k3b (etc) doesn't like it.  I guess I need
> the etherboot image in a .com file format with a dos framework and
> autoexec.bat to load it.

I was rather displeased to see that it wanted to repartion/format my
harddrive :-(

I rebuilt it to just load etherboot off the iso image. This only works
for PCI nics, however, no go for old ISA cards. Still it might be useful
to someone. I put my hacked version here:

         ftp://k12linux.mesd.k12.or.us/pub/K12LTSP/testing/eb_pci.iso

-Eric