Boot from CDROM option in lilo for old computer. Possible?
I have an old laptop that my last install had involved using floppy images because the laptop is so old (*creak*) that it doesn't have a BIOS option capable of booting from the CDROM. What I was wondering if there was any option in lilo or another boot loader that could include a PC driver for a standard CDROM (hdc) that would allow me to boot from it as a boot option directly from the boot prompt? Reason being is I want to try upgrading it to 9.1 -- which, primitively enough, still requires booting from a CDROM or floppy to initiate. It really would be nice if SuSE had an update option that could either do an update from a currently running system (followed by a reboot), or could start the reboot kernel directly from the running system. I want to config the computer for a remote audio device, possibly...it might have the horse power for that....:-) Either that or as a "dumb terminal" or internet browser-only system. Thanks for any pointers on the CDBOOT... -linda
Linda A. W. wrote:
I have an old laptop that my last install had involved using floppy images because the laptop is so old (*creak*) that it doesn't have a BIOS option capable of booting from the CDROM.
What I was wondering if there was any option in lilo or another boot loader that could include a PC driver for a standard CDROM (hdc) that would allow me to boot from it as a boot option directly from the boot prompt?
Reason being is I want to try upgrading it to 9.1 -- which, primitively enough, still requires booting from a CDROM or floppy to initiate.
It really would be nice if SuSE had an update option that could either do an update from a currently running system (followed by a reboot), or could start the reboot kernel directly from the running system.
I want to config the computer for a remote audio device, possibly...it might have the horse power for that....:-) Either that or as a "dumb terminal" or internet browser-only system.
Thanks for any pointers on the CDBOOT... -linda
I seem to recall some old DOS utilities, that would direct booting to the CD. One of those might do the trick. Another possibility, would be a network install. You'd mount the CD on another system and share it via NFS or Samba and then with the boot floppy from SuSE, install over a network.
James Knott wrote:
I seem to recall some old DOS utilities, that would direct booting to the CD. One of those might do the trick. Another possibility, would be a network install. You'd mount the CD on another system and share it via NFS or Samba and then with the boot floppy from SuSE, install over a network.
=== The system no longer has a working DOS partition on it. I was just hoping to get by (for laziness's sake) w/o burning flopppies. Your idea of using NFS or SMB is probably the best way even though it only has a builtin 10Mb ethernet (I probably could use a pcmcia add-in card to get around that for purposes of the install...in fact...might not be a bad idea to just buy an extra 100Mb card since the card I could use for it is a 3com575 based card and I don't know if it is supported in 9.1. I know support for it was broken in 9.0 -- the driver and card utils had a driver version mismatch on the install CD. :-( pcmcia cards are still pretty expensive for ethernet...unlike for desktop systems where you can find them for under $10 at places like Fry's. Haven't seen any gigabyte PCMCIA cards. I'm not sure -- but it might be the pcmcia bus specification. I'm not sure if it can handle a gigabit xfer speed...isn't the pcmcia bus still 33MHz * 32 bits? That'd be pushin' it for a gigabit card w/o some moderate buffering -- and that'd still be using 100% of the bus's BW. Have only seen 1 laptop w/gigabit ethernet (a dell) so far and that was built-in. Thanks for the idea on the network install. I'm sure it would be faster than the builtin CD even if the CD is 4-8x just because of the seek latency... -linda
James Knott wrote:
I seem to recall some old DOS utilities, that would direct booting to the CD. One of those might do the trick. Another possibility, would be a network install. You'd mount the CD on another system and share it via NFS or Samba and then with the boot floppy from SuSE, install over a network.
=== The system no longer has a working DOS partition on it. I was just hoping to get by (for laziness's sake) w/o burning flopppies. Your idea of using NFS or SMB is probably the best way even though it only has a builtin 10Mb ethernet (I probably could use a pcmcia add-in card to get around that for purposes of the install...in fact...might not be a bad idea to just buy an extra 100Mb card since the card I could use for it is a 3com575 based card and I don't know if it is supported in 9.1. I know support for it was broken in 9.0 -- the driver and card utils had a driver version mismatch on the install CD. :-(
pcmcia cards are still pretty expensive for ethernet...unlike for desktop systems where you can find them for under $10 at places like Fry's. Haven't seen any gigabyte PCMCIA cards. I'm not sure -- but it might be the pcmcia bus specification. I'm not sure if it can handle a gigabit xfer speed...isn't the pcmcia bus still 33MHz * 32 bits? That'd be pushin' it for a gigabit card w/o some moderate buffering -- and that'd still be using 100% of the bus's BW.
Have only seen 1 laptop w/gigabit ethernet (a dell) so far and that was built-in.
Thanks for the idea on the network install. I'm sure it would be faster than the builtin CD even if the CD is 4-8x just because of the seek latency...
-linda If I may suggest... I've never had any flavour of Linux refuse the Linksys card. It has worked w/Mandrake, Red Hat, SuSE, Gentoo... you name it. -- ...CH "The more they over-think the plumbing,
On Monday 26 July 2004 14:47, Linda A. W. wrote: the easier it is to stop up the drain." Scotty
There are times when DOS does come in handy. You might want to check out OpenDOS, for those occasions. Also those utilities simply modified the floppy, to direct booting to another drive. It doesn't actually require DOS, if you can figure out some other method of creating the floppy. However, it's been years since I've looked at that sort of thing. I also seem to recall a Linux method, but I'm not sure on that. A 10 Mb ethernet should be OK for an install. It'd still be faster than an install over the internet, for most internet connections. After all, how often do you plan on installing. A few years ago, I had to do a "network install" of OS/2, using a Lap Link parallel port cable. While it took quite a while, it did work. Linda A. W. wrote:
James Knott wrote:
I seem to recall some old DOS utilities, that would direct booting to the CD. One of those might do the trick. Another possibility, would be a network install. You'd mount the CD on another system and share it via NFS or Samba and then with the boot floppy from SuSE, install over a network.
=== The system no longer has a working DOS partition on it. I was just hoping to get by (for laziness's sake) w/o burning flopppies. Your idea of using NFS or SMB is probably the best way even though it only has a builtin 10Mb ethernet (I probably could use a pcmcia add-in card to get around that for purposes of the install...in fact...might not be a bad idea to just buy an extra 100Mb card since the card I could use for it is a 3com575 based card and I don't know if it is supported in 9.1. I know support for it was broken in 9.0 -- the driver and card utils had a driver version mismatch on the install CD. :-(
pcmcia cards are still pretty expensive for ethernet...unlike for desktop systems where you can find them for under $10 at places like Fry's. Haven't seen any gigabyte PCMCIA cards. I'm not sure -- but it might be the pcmcia bus specification. I'm not sure if it can handle a gigabit xfer speed...isn't the pcmcia bus still 33MHz * 32 bits? That'd be pushin' it for a gigabit card w/o some moderate buffering -- and that'd still be using 100% of the bus's BW.
Have only seen 1 laptop w/gigabit ethernet (a dell) so far and that was built-in.
Thanks for the idea on the network install. I'm sure it would be faster than the builtin CD even if the CD is 4-8x just because of the seek latency...
-linda
On Saturday 24 July 2004 22:12, Linda A. W. wrote:
I have an old laptop that my last install had involved using floppy images because the laptop is so old (*creak*) that it doesn't have a BIOS option capable of booting from the CDROM.
What I was wondering if there was any option in lilo or another boot loader that could include a PC driver for a standard CDROM (hdc) that would allow me to boot from it as a boot option directly from the boot prompt?
Reason being is I want to try upgrading it to 9.1 -- which, primitively enough, still requires booting from a CDROM or floppy to initiate.
It really would be nice if SuSE had an update option that could either do an update from a currently running system (followed by a reboot), or could start the reboot kernel directly from the running system.
I want to config the computer for a remote audio device, possibly...it might have the horse power for that....:-) Either that or as a "dumb terminal" or internet browser-only system.
Thanks for any pointers on the CDBOOT...
Surf to http://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/suse/i386/9.1/boot/loader/ Download linux and initrd and be sure they are on a partition reachable by GRUB (e.g. /mnt/data1/suse-9.1-inst mounted from /dev/hda2. In /boot/grub/menu.lst, add the next 3 lines: title Install SuSE Linx 9.1 kernel (hd0,1)/suse-9.1-inst/linux vga=0x31A install=http://pub/suse/i3836/9.1 initrd (hd0,1)/suse-9.1-inst/initrd Save menu.lst and reboot. (vga=0x31A is 1280x1024 at 16bpp) Cheers, Leen
On Sunday 25 July 2004 01:28, Leendert Meyer wrote:
In /boot/grub/menu.lst, add the next 3 lines:
title Install SuSE Linx 9.1 kernel (hd0,1)/suse-9.1-inst/linux vga=0x31A install=http://pub/suse/i3836/9.1 initrd (hd0,1)/suse-9.1-inst/initrd
Of course, for LILO there are similar lines. You don't need to install GRUB, because LILO can do this too. I don't recall the exact syntax, but I guess you have at least one good example in your /etc/lilo.conf. ;) Cheers, Leen
On Sunday 25 July 2004 01.33, Leendert Meyer wrote:
On Sunday 25 July 2004 01:28, Leendert Meyer wrote:
In /boot/grub/menu.lst, add the next 3 lines:
title Install SuSE Linx 9.1 kernel (hd0,1)/suse-9.1-inst/linux vga=0x31A install=http://pub/suse/i3836/9.1 initrd (hd0,1)/suse-9.1-inst/initrd
Of course, for LILO there are similar lines. You don't need to install GRUB, because LILO can do this too. I don't recall the exact syntax, but I guess you have at least one good example in your /etc/lilo.conf. ;)
Cheers,
Leen
I seem to recall using older versions of SuSE, that you could install Lilo on a floppy. Wouldn't that also be true for Grub? And also; isn't there a way to point Grub/lilo to boot from a CDrom instead of disk as long as you know where on the CD the bootimage is placed ??? -- /Rikard ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Rikard Johnels email : rikjoh@norweb.se Web : http://www.rikjoh.com Mob : +46 735 05 51 01 ------------------------ Public PGP fingerprint ---------------------------- < 15 28 DF 78 67 98 B2 16 1F D3 FD C5 59 D4 B6 78 46 1C EE 56 >
participants (5)
-
C Hamel -
James Knott -
Leendert Meyer -
Linda A. W. -
Rikard Johnels