[TriLUG] installing FC2 without boot floppy

[Rob Lockhart]

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On 10/28/2004 03:52 PM, Jeremy Portzer wrote:

> On Thu, 2004-10-28 at 15:34, Rob Lockhart wrote:
>
>> Talking about Fedora Core 2, it is impossible to believe that
>> there is no boot floppy available.
>
>
> I don't understand why that's impossible to believe.  The 2.6
> kernel simply is too big to fit on a floppy and still have room for
> any user-land code.  A floppy is only 1.44 MB, that's a very small
> amount compared to the complexity of the 2.6 kernel.
>
I would assume that it would be very easy (not necessarily for me, I'm
not a kernel expert) to provide some sort of method to pause the
install (and insert the next disk) to continue loading.  Maybe that's
too naive if indeed like you're saying, the kernel itself, with
essential modules removed, is bigger than 1.44MB.

> Fedora Core 2 and the 2.6 kernel are designed for modern hardware;
> it's not unexpected to find out that you'd have problems with
> dinosaurs. Either work around the problems or use an older
> distribution that was designed for that hardware.
>
>> I was going to try and install it at work on an old Dell (i586
>> 200MMX, 128MB RAM), to serve as a lab DHCP/BOOTP/HTTP server.  It
>> says with the newer BIOS that if you specify "Floppy", it
>> actually first tries the floppy drive, then PnP CD-ROM, then hard
>> drive (whatever PnP CDROM is).  It doesn't seem to work, as it
>> doesn't boot from CD-ROM with a Centos-3 boot CD I made (Centos
>> requires i686 and 256MB RAM).
>
>
> I assume there is no specific "CD-ROM" option in the BIOS based on
> that description?  It was pretty common in the 200Mhz days to have
> CD-ROM booting; I'm surprised it's not an explicit option.
>
Yes, I am equally surprised.  But then again, it is a Dell, one of the
older GXi models I think.  The BIOS allows for only a handful of
options, and you can either boot from:  1) floppy, 2) hard drive, or
3) PnP ATAPI CD-ROM.

My main gripe is that it should be able to use the 2.6 kernel, but
maybe I'm better off running RH9 (versus FC1).  Also, FC2 is supposed
to support i586 and above, according to the supported hardware page.
It would really be nice if I could just boot off a USB device; I
wonder if some program allows such emulation?  I.e., boot off the
floppy then redirect to USB.

> I think you could also boot from the network (PXE?) with an
> appropriately configured ethernet card with boot ROM, but I don't
> know the details of that.  There are also "etherboot" floppies that
> simulate this if you don't have the boot ROM.

Yes, you are correct, so that may be possible (thus exceeding the
floppy disk capacity, but fine for network boot).  Not sure if the
BIOS supports that, I am thinking not but I'll have to dig some more.

Thanks for your suggestions, Jeremy.

Regards,
  -Rob

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