diff options
| author | hpa <hpa> | 2001-12-11 21:17:42 +0000 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | hpa <hpa> | 2001-12-11 21:17:42 +0000 |
| commit | 210bd8c3a671905cd9e4756bde8ffce90ff346c9 (patch) | |
| tree | 428f61d3ffaeb4b0be3d9f336a76f9a95168aff8 | |
| parent | 84f7d47fc38f36ec4016f5fdfc37c32b228169b6 (diff) | |
| download | syslinux-1.65-pre5.tar.gz | |
Document at least the existence of memdisk.syslinux-1.65-pre5
| -rw-r--r-- | NEWS | 3 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | memdisk/memdisk.doc | 56 |
2 files changed, 59 insertions, 0 deletions
@@ -9,6 +9,9 @@ Changes in 1.65: specify the initrd address limit.) * Handle small "pseudo-kernels"; images that use the Linux kernel boot protocols but are less than 64K in size. + * MEMDISK: New subsystem; this is a driver which allows + legacy OSes to boot using an in-memory simulated disk. + See memdisk/memdisk.doc for more info. Changes in 1.64: * Limited support for hardware flow control when using a diff --git a/memdisk/memdisk.doc b/memdisk/memdisk.doc new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e67000b9 --- /dev/null +++ b/memdisk/memdisk.doc @@ -0,0 +1,56 @@ +$Id$ +[This documentation is rather crufty at the moment.] + +MEMDISK is meant to allow booting legacy operating systems via PXE, +and as a workaround for BIOSes where ISOLINUX image support doesn't +work. + +MEMDISK simulates a disk by claiming a chunk of high memory for the +disk and a (very small - 2K typical) chunk of low (DOS) memory for the +driver itself, then hooking the INT 13h (disk driver) and INT 15h +(memory query) BIOS interrupts. + +To use it, type on the SYSLINUX command line: + +memdisk initrd=diskimg.img + +... where diskimg.img is the disk image you want to boot from. + +[Obviously, the memdisk binary as well as your disk image file need to +be present in the boot image directory.] + +... or add to your syslinux.cfg/pxelinux.cfg/isolinux.cfg something like: + +label dos + kernel memdisk + append initrd=dosboot.img + +Note the following: + +a) The disk image should *not* be compressed. + +b) If the disk image is one of the following sizes, it's assumed to be a +floppy image: + + 368,640 bytes - 360K floppy + 737,280 bytes - 720K floppy + 1,222,800 bytes - 1200K floppy + 1,474,560 bytes - 1440K floppy + 2,949,120 bytes - 2880K floppy + +For any other size, the image is assumed to be a hard disk image (and +should typically have an MBR and a partition table.) Currently, the hard +disk is always given the geometry of 16 heads, 63 sectors (the number of +cylinders is derived from the image size) and should therefore be an even +multiple of 516,096 bytes; in a future version I plan to examine the +partition table to deduce the CHS geometry. + +SYSLINUX 1.65-pre4 does not contain what I would call a "release +quality" version of MEMDISK, but it does seem to work (I have +successfully booted DOS over the net using PXELINUX with it.) It +contains an awful lot of debugging messages at this point, for one +thing. + +If you want to recompile it from sources, you will need to make sure that +you have a fairly recent binutils installed. I have been using the +binutils-2.11.90.0.8-9 RPM from RedHat. |
