|
From: Michael S. <sch...@gm...> - 2006-01-25 13:03:50
|
Hi all, I got tired of needing lots of boot floppies to do different stuff (memtest, cmospwd, grub, smart boot manager, freedos, etc.) which are almost empty, so I decided to build a floppy that can do all of the above. On this floppy there are still about 600KB free, so I thought to put a few etherboot .zlilos onto it as well. They are intended for booting knoppix-terminalserver (or grml-terminalserver) when the used BIOS is too old for netboot support. But it should remain as generic as possible, i. e. boot everything else a netboot BIOS can usually boot. However, I don't have an idea on which PCs I'll have to use it, so I cannot select the correct driver before building it. So I have a few questions: - etherboot has quite a lot of compilation options about supported images and the like. Which of them are usually supported by a common netboot BIOS (on modern mainboards), which are never supported? I intend to remove the latter ones. - when making all zlilos (with default options, one for each driver) they consume more than one megabyte disk space -- too much for my size constraints. But I guess they contain lots of duplicate code. Is there an option somewhere I missed that allows to make the zlilos two-part (like using a generic zlilo as "kernel" and a small driver-specific file as "initrd" -- or the same with GNU multiboot modules)? - making an image of all drivers fails. So I guess the best option would be a bunch of zlilos sorted by card manufacturer or something like this. The RELNOTES suggest to use the "multiple driver rule". Where do I find documentation about that? Simply using make bin/foo--bar--baz.zlilo (as I read the comment in parentheses) did not work for me. - are there any known incompatibilities (like driver foo crashes when it finds card bar) to avoid when making images for multiple drivers? Are there any drivers that do not work at all (so they could be removed) or that are built-in into chipsets that always contain a netboot-able BIOS anyway (so are not needed on a generic floppy)? - Any other suggestions? I noticed that other etherboot disks uses SYSLINUX as boot loader. Replacing GRUB with SYSLINUX is no option for me (unless SYSLINUX supports all the stuff i need from GRUB, and I doubt that), but I'd chainload SYSLINUX if that made my life easier. Thanks in advance for your suggestions, Michael |
|
From: Berend De S. <ber...@uc...> - 2006-01-25 13:33:51
|
On Wednesday 25 January 2006 15:03, Michael Schierl wrote: > Hi all, > > On this floppy there are still about 600KB free, so I thought to put > a few etherboot .zlilos onto it as well. They are intended for > booting knoppix-terminalserver (or grml-terminalserver) when the used > BIOS is too old for netboot support. I've used Netboot on a 386SX, with 2MB RAM, to boot Linux 1.2.13. It's unlikely that hardware too old for Netboot will boot Knoppix of any sort. Are we talking about the same Netboot? > - are there any known incompatibilities (like driver foo crashes when > it finds card bar) to avoid when making images for multiple drivers? Yes. Some 8390/ne2000 drivers will crash other add-on cards and the PC. Not just network cards. It'll take down SCSI cards too. That's why you need to specify I/O port. But this is for 8 and 16 bit ISA -- not for PCI. Regards, Berend -- Confidentiality notice: http://ucs.co.za/conf.html |
|
From: Michael S. <sch...@gm...> - 2006-01-25 16:09:42
|
Berend De Schouwer schrieb: > On Wednesday 25 January 2006 15:03, Michael Schierl wrote: >> Hi all, >> >> On this floppy there are still about 600KB free, so I thought to put >> a few etherboot .zlilos onto it as well. They are intended for >> booting knoppix-terminalserver (or grml-terminalserver) when the used >> BIOS is too old for netboot support. > > I've used Netboot on a 386SX, with 2MB RAM, to boot Linux 1.2.13. It's > unlikely that hardware too old for Netboot will boot Knoppix of any > sort. Are we talking about the same Netboot? I guess not. For me, netboot is the feature included in most modern mainboard BIOSes to boot via network without any other hardware/software, just enable it in BIOS and boot. Works like a charm if the BIOS support it. Just like boot from CDROM or boot from USB. And I know of Pentium PCs that have a BIOS that does not support that (some even lack support booting from CDROM). And if you think Knoppix is too slow on these machines (even for recovery when someone misconfigured his system), replace Knoppix by UDPcast (for taking an image of a broken filesystem before trying to repair it). Michael |
|
From: Nico O. <ni...@an...> - 2006-01-25 15:50:18
|
Hi Michael Have you looked at http://etherboot.anadex.de/. There is a section that deal with a universal boot floppy. Nico |
|
From: Michael S. <sch...@gm...> - 2006-01-25 16:16:58
|
Nico Oosthuizen schrieb: > Have you looked at http://etherboot.anadex.de/. > There is a section that deal with a universal > boot floppy. I have looked there, yes. There is a boot floppy available, but I could not find information about how it was created (the README on the floppy contains links to all the programs used to build it, but no build options etc. in it either). Michael |
|
From: Nico O. <ni...@an...> - 2006-01-26 19:59:44
|
Michael I have tried Josh Lehan's PXE-On-A-Disk and it works very nice on a floppy and the cd. In his readme file he explains how he has done it and he also include his makefile. Nico > > Have you looked at http://etherboot.anadex.de/. > > There is a section that deal with a universal > > boot floppy. > > I have looked there, yes. There is a boot floppy > available, but I could > not find information about how it was created (the README > on the floppy > contains links to all the programs used to build it, but > no build > options etc. in it either). > > Michael Get Ananzi dial-up for ONLY R72 per month - 'strue!!! Click here for more info: http://www.swiftsms.co.za/swiftT/track.asp?e=*em*&cid=105&u=8&tid=1032 |
|
From: Nico O. <ni...@an...> - 2006-01-26 20:06:42
|
Sorry forgot to give address of Josh's. ftp://ftp.scyld.com/private/jlehan/pxe-on-a-disk.tar.bz2 This is the file with everything zipped together. > > I have tried Josh Lehan's PXE-On-A-Disk and it works very > nice on a floppy and the cd. In his readme file he > explains > how he has done it and he also include his makefile. > > Nico > > > > Have you looked at http://etherboot.anadex.de/. > > > There is a section that deal with a universal > > > boot floppy. > > > > I have looked there, yes. There is a boot floppy > > available, but I could > > not find information about how it was created (the > README > > on the floppy > > contains links to all the programs used to build it, > but > > no build > > options etc. in it either). > > > > Michael > Get Ananzi dial-up for ONLY R72 per month - 'strue!!! > > Click here for more info: > http://www.swiftsms.co.za/swiftT/track.asp?e=*em*&cid=105&u=8&tid=1032 > > > > ------------------------------------------------------- > This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Do you > grep through log files > for problems? Stop! Download the new AJAX search engine > that makes > searching your log files as easy as surfing the web. > DOWNLOAD SPLUNK! > http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=103432&bid=230486&dat=121642 > _______________________________________________ > Etherboot-users mailing list > Eth...@li... > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/etherboot-users Get Ananzi dial-up for ONLY R72 per month - 'strue!!! Click here for more info: http://www.swiftsms.co.za/swiftT/track.asp?e=*em*&cid=105&u=8&tid=1032 |
|
From: Michael S. <sch...@gm...> - 2006-01-26 20:48:29
|
Nico Oosthuizen wrote: >> I have tried Josh Lehan's PXE-On-A-Disk and it works very >> nice on a floppy and the cd. In his readme file he >> explains >> how he has done it and he also include his makefile. >> > Sorry forgot to give address of Josh's. > > ftp://ftp.scyld.com/private/jlehan/pxe-on-a-disk.tar.bz2 > > This is the file with everything zipped together. Thank you for your reply. That floppy looks interesting - although it is yet another floppy with lots of single images. So I guess I can forget building multiple ones... Copying it verbatim is not an option either, since it uses 684KB and I only have 600KB left. And, found in his Makefile: # PREREQUISITES: # 1) SYSLINUX unpacked into ./syslinux-3.11 # 2) Etherboot unpacked into ./etherboot-5.4.1 # 3) Etherboot's Config file(s) patched to your taste 3) is my problem :) since I lack experience what options are needed and what aren't. Anyway, I'll build a few zlilos with default options now and put them onto my disk (3com and realtek ones since I know I already had to fix boxes with these network cards in, plus as many others as will fit.). If someone has a good idea with respect to get more drivers on the disk without needing more space (either by that legendary "multiple driver rule" or by making images smaller), I'll have to change it again :) Since network boot it not the main purpose of this disk, making more space available on it is not really an option. Michael |
|
From: <gb...@us...> - 2006-01-25 20:35:54
|
Am Mittwoch, 25. Januar 2006 17:09 schrieb Michael Schierl: > Berend De Schouwer schrieb: > > I've used Netboot on a 386SX, with 2MB RAM, to boot Linux 1.2.13. It's > > unlikely that hardware too old for Netboot will boot Knoppix of any > > sort. Are we talking about the same Netboot? > > I guess not. Indeed. Berend probably meant this one: http://netboot.sourceforge.net/. It is some sort of an anchestor of etherboot. Georg |
