For my LinuxBIOS server systems, I put a modified Debian rescue disk on the DoC
(or TFTP ramdisk). Init is replaced with a simple minded program that does a 10
second countdown unless return is pressed (keyboard or serial). If it reaches 0,
it runs /boot (a script that loads IDE drivers, mounts hda1 on /mnt and boots
into /mnt/bzImage using monte). Press return and you get a root prompt (must
implement passwords!). fdisk, mkfs, ide drivers, etc are available from there.
It wouldn't be hard at all to mount the CDROM and use monte to boot.
G'day,
sjames
Quoting Ronald G Minnich <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> On 19 Jun 2001, Eric W. Biederman wrote:
>
> > Ron my 2.4.2 kexec stuff works well. I'm very dubious about a
> bootloader
> > in the kernel though. I can squeeze a network bootloader into 8KB of
> > user space so space is not super precious. I suspect anything in the
> > kernel will be a maintenance nightmare.
>
> It bugs me too but consider this: I have a redhat CD. I need to mount
> that
> thing and boot the kernel on it. The redhat CD is NOT going to have
> your
> user-mode kexec stuff on it. Users really want to say stuff like
> root=/dev/hdc kernel=/boot/generic.gz
> to some kind of boot loader.
>
> Basically the problem is this: how do we give people the capability
> they
> have right now with "normal" bioses, which allow them to boot an
> arbitrary
> kernel from CD/floppy/hdax/whatever with just about any Linux file
> system.
> This question first came up with some folks who had a linuxbios machine,
> a
> redhat CD, and a totally blank hda. There was NOTHING I could do to
> help
> them, save tell them "put in old BIOS chip". That's not a great answer.
>
> To support these normal uses, we are going to need to be able to mount
> arbitrary media and boot kernels on that media. We can't assume the
> presence of Kexec/Monte/LOBOS/bootimg programs on the media -- we
> didn't
> create it. All we've got is what is in flash.
>
> So what to do? I can't come up with any good way save doing it
> in-kernel
> -- except maybe doing some sort of exec but supplying the image for the
> exec from compressed in-kernel code. That seems much harder than just
> doing it in-kernel.
>
>
> one other possibility is to have an rdimage in the kernel, which you
> put
> in ramdisk, mount as root, and run. But that sure seems complicated to
> me.
>
> So what can we do? I'm not sure.
>
> ron
>
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