Re: ISO Snapshots

[Chris Pressey <cpressey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, 17 Jan 2004 20:23:02 -0500
Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> 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.

As I mentioned yesterday, I've been evaluating btmgr recently (for
various reasons, not all related to DragonFly.)  I managed to acquire a
(working) ATAPI CD-ROM for my test machine and I can confirm that btmgr
does indeed let me boot from the CD.

I tried FreeBSD 4.9 and 5.1 install CDs.  If I'm not mistaken, 4.9 is
Emulated El-Torito and 5.1 is Non-Emulated El Torito.

The test machine certainly does not have any support for booting from CD
in the BIOS - it's a 486DX/66 (!)

I have no way of testing a PCMCIA CD-ROM.  btmgr mentions nothing of
SCSI, I assume it doesn't support it.

I can also add the following:

I tried building btmgr under FreeBSD 4.9.  It fails due to nasm choking
on some macros.  I think I'll have to dig up a vintage version of nasm,
circa 2000, and try again.

I also tried running the Linux btmgr install program under FreeBSD's
linuxulator.  No luck there either, "/dev/ad1 is not a block device."
Probably not hard to fix that, though.  Just because it would be nice to
be able to build the boot floppy from an OS in at least the same general
family as the OS that it's intended for booting... :)

-Chris