Laptops :: Using GRUB/Linux to run a DSL CD?

I current have Debian (with GRUB as boot loader), installed on my Compaq LTE 5400 laptop (150mhz, 80mb ram)

I have a bay for floppy/cd-rom (but can only have one at a time), and an external CD-Rom drive (pcmcia).

The DSL floppy image does not seem to detect my PCMCIA cd-rom drive.

Is there a way to use grub/debian to boot the DSL CD, so I can then do a HDD install? (debian is having problems with X, I'm betting DSL can detect everything. might as well use it)

I see here that someone used grub on the CD, instead of ISOLINUX. Could someone give me the grub commands (when you push e to edit grub), so I could change my current grub settings to the ones needed for DSL? Thanks

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/talk/node/25

[-]That is referring to using a cd with grub to boot from the hard disk.[/-]

The Grub Core (think of it like the Linux kernel) does not support booting from the cdrom.

Grub2 is supposed to support this feature, eventually. Recent CVS copies of it will boot some cds on a select few cdrom drives. Needless to say, grub2 is still very much in it's alpha stages.

If your laptop has a usb connection, copy the contents of the CD to a usb pendrive, and use the USB bootfloppy to boot from the usb.

Or you can copy the contents of the cd to / on your Debian partition and use the normal bootfloppy with the fromhd= cheatcode.

Editus - Click before you assume things, JP.

I have no idea how that works, but I will investigate and see if i can reproduce the results.

-J.P.

In that case, is there a pcmcia boot disk for DSL? Is it possible to make one?

use smart boot manager, (google it,) its a floppy that will let you boot from cdrom

please ignore me, i just learned that smart boot manager does not support pcmcia! well it worked for my laptop but that has an internal cdrom and external floppy.

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