Jochen, Gordon,
Thank your for your insights.
Okuji,
I think this ability (if technically feasible) would make a worthy product
differentiator for grub.
"Jochen Hoenicke" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Mar 6, Gordon Matzigkeit wrote:
> > >>>>> Gabor Liptak writes:
> >
> > GL> Let me repeat again what I'm trying to do here. I would like to
> > GL> be able to use dd to save an image from a bootable floppy disk to
> > GL> my hard drive and use grub to boot that image as a "bootable"
> > GL> file. Is this doable?
> >
> > Grub can certainly load the first sector of your image at 0:7c00, and
> > transfer control to it, but you have to ask yourself ``how is the
> > loaded sector supposed to find the rest of the image in order to
> > continue the bootstrap?''
> >
> > The problem is not in Grub, the problem is that there is no standard
> > way of communicating the location of the image to the image's
> > bootstrap code. If you think of a way, then you should propose it,
> > and then maybe it will one day be supported by Grub.
>
> This could be done with a similar mechanism as the "map" command:
> Install an int-13 handler that maps a disk image to a bios drive. It
> is much more difficult though: The handler has to transform the CHS
> (cylinder/head/address) triple into a linear block number, add the
> address of the first block of the disk file and recalculate this
> address to a new CHS address. If the file is fragmentated it is even
> more difficult. And if the OS circumvents the bios (like linux does)
> one must use a technique like initrd anyway.
>
> Jochen
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