Re: ISO Snapshots

[Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@xxxxxxxxx>]

Matthew Dillon said on Jan 17, 2004 at 15:11:52:
>     I think the bootstrap issues can be addressed as we get nearer to 
>     our first release (in June or July).
> 
>     At the moment I think they need to be set aside, primarily because it
>     tends to disrupt other necessary installation/boot management work (e.g.
>     from the FreeBSD folks experience trying to constantly fit the kernel
>     onto a floppy).
 
What I had in mind was creating a floppy that just contains a boot
manager letting you boot from the CD, no kernel required on the floppy.

After some digging around, it looks like grub doesn't let you do this,
but I find one other project that does claim to allow it:

http://btmgr.sourceforge.net/

   o  Booting from CD-ROM 
      Smart BootManager supports booting from almost all kinds of IDE
      ATAPI CD-ROMs, including PCMCIA CD-ROMs. You can let the BIOS
      boot from C: only and assign a password for it, then you can
      boot from CD-ROM with Smart BootManager. If you have a laptop
      with a special PCMCIA CD-ROM which has no support for booting in
      the BIOS, Smart BootManager can help you boot from it.

Sounds like exactly what Mark needs.  If he confirms that it works,
perhaps the DragonFly site can include a link to this site, for those
who don't have bootable CD-ROM drives.  The site contains
documentation and DOS and Linux binaries.  The user guide tells you
how to install on a floppy (instructions differ for DOS and Linux).  I
haven't tried it because I don't have a floppy disk around.

Rahul