On Sun, 15 Dec 1996, Tim Sailer wrote: > In your email to me, Dale Scheetz, you wrote: > > I am aware of how to do this with loadlin and initrd, however, the only > > reason for using initrd is to configure mount points on the CD to r/w disk > > for the portions of the system that needs to be changed from time to time. > > I don't think that initrd can be run from lilo (but I could be mistaken), > > but if you are willing to configure the system (fstab for instance) > > completely before comitting it to CD you should be able to boot the CD > > from a small partition with lilo and a kernel that has built in drivers > > for the cd drive. However, this is a lot of work to get a system that > > will, by virtue of CD access speeds be brutally slow. > > True, but faster than floppies, and only 1 disk!
Exactly! I didn't mean to imply that this had no value, just that it wasn't the way to go with a "real" system. > > > The main reason for my interst in this path is that it provides a path for > > bringing up a system (larger than base) without boot, root, and base > > disketts, from which a "real" system can be installed with all the > > networking tools needed to perform this installation in whatever method > > the installer desires. > > Thats what I want to do too. Almost every install I've been doing on other > peoples machines have had win31 or 95 on it with a working CDROM. > Both of these situations are resolvable with loadlin from the dos partition. > > I have been hearing on Linux-Kernel that there is work being done to patch > > the kernel so that it will boot with a loop device, thus allowing an ext2 > > file system to be built as a file image that can be copied to any > > partition (either dos or linux) and be booted using the loop device to > > mount root. This would be a read/write filesystem without the limitations > > on umsdos file systems. This configuration can be booted from either lilo > > or loadlin. > > That would be perfect... > I'm waiting to see the patches. I'll let you know how this works. I intend to set up something like this as an alternative to an emergency diskette. Luck, Dwarf ------------ -------------- aka Dale Scheetz Phone: 1 (904) 877-0257 Flexible Software Fax: NONE Black Creek Critters e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------ If you don't see what you want, just ask -------------- -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]