Re: [Solved] Re: Little-known features of El Torito Spec

H. Peter Anvin (hpa@transmeta.com)
29 Aug 1999 23:41:23 GMT


Followup to: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9908301731340.15431-100000@speedy.shearer.org>
By author: <dan@shearer.org>
In newsgroup: linux.dev.kernel
>
> > I've got a patch for 'mkisofs' to allow non-emulation/hard disk booting
> > etc. Check out http://www.colonel-panic.com ...
>
> So if you or someone else gets to publishing test images before I do then
> good! The upshot appears to be no kernel mods required, all work done
> except for mass testing of BIOSes.
>

Definitely. Note that you can't just bootstrap a bzImage this way;
you still need a boot loader to go before the kernel. As I've already
mentioned I intend for lbcon to support this booting mode (with full
access to the ISO 9660 filesystem), but lbcon isn't ready for prime
time just yet.

*Furthermore*, no-emulation does have a limit on the size of the image
(640K), which means it may not be suitable to simply attach a stub
loader to the image anyhow (after all, you might as well just make a
disk image if you're going to do that.)

Hard disk emulation is known to be broken on many BIOSes, and as such
isn't really an option.

-hpa

-- 
<hpa@transmeta.com> at work, <hpa@zytor.com> in private!

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