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Topic: booting from USB device via floppy, bootstrap control transfer

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porte64

Group: Members
Posts: 3
Joined: Nov. 2003

Posted: Nov. 25 2003,11:30

Many users of the tiny wonder DSL probably have USB
storage mass devices but own a motherboard which
does not support booting directly from USB devices.

Hence my question: is it possible to place some
bootstrap code on the floppy so that control
is passed to the USB device when booting ?

Idea: insert a floppy and USB disk, boot the machine
and get DSL running without user interaction !!!

Is this currently possible ?
How do you feel about this ?

Best regards
Paul

Ravi
Unregistered

Posted: Nov. 26 2003,08:09

i have precisely the same querry.
i tried using a dos floppy to boot and detect the usb drive, then used loadlin to boot the image from the usb drive (128mb).
i used puppy linux.
the kernel uncompresses but runs out of space!

Gilbert Ashley Offline

Group: Members
Posts: 51
Joined: Nov. 2003

Posted: Nov. 27 2003,13:48

Try the boot disk from RUNT linux. Kernel 2.4.22 and by default boots /dev/sda1. I have put together a small distro based on ZipSlack 9.1 which runs uncompressed from any FAT partition using the umsdos file system. My BIOS won't boot a USB drive, so to run from my 256MB FLASH disk I use a boot floppy based on the RUNT boot.img. I also run this distro from hard disk though, using loadlin, or lilo. It's great for beginners, because it requires no partitoning, installs easily(just unzip it on any FAT partition), and wherever you run it from it's 100% compliant linux- no hacks, no workarounds, and is easily configurable and extendable any way you want. This distro includes fluxbox, windowmaker, opera7.22, rox-filer, wmcpuload, asmem, yawmppp(which lets you go online with one click. A huge collection of goodies- all fits in a 80MB zip file. Unzips to about 215MB including space reserved for /root. This can be cut down alot but all packages are intact.

porte64

Group: Members
Posts: 3
Joined: Nov. 2003

Posted: Nov. 28 2003,15:42

Thanks: RUNT should work. It was design precisely
to meet that need. :laugh:

Here's their homepage:
http://www.ncsu.edu/resnet/runt/

It is to run a linux kernel aware of USB/SCSI devices
and pass automatically control to them.

Can anyone try to boot the lastest flonix (2.4) that way ?

Paul

Aeros_Saga Offline

Group: Members
Posts: 9
Joined: Dec. 2003

Posted: Dec. 29 2003,05:39

Alright, I've been trying to boot DSL from my usb storage device. I am using the runt boot image, as I have had the most success with it. Currently during boot it recognizes my storage device, sees the kernel, mounts the filesystem, and then I get this:
VFS: Mounted root umsdos filesystem
Trying to move old root to /initrd...Failed
Unmounting old root
Trying to free ramdisk memory...ok
Freeing unused kernel memory: 120k freed
Warning: unable to open initial console
Kernel panic: No init found. Try passing init=option to kernel

My bootline in syslinux is as follows:
boot: usb root=/dev/sda1 rw -s

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to correct this issue? Any help is much appreciated

Regards,

Aeros

16 replies since Nov. 25 2003,11:30

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