Re: Installing on old machine

From: Michael Tokarev (mjt@private)
Date: Thu Mar 14 2002 - 18:38:48 PST


Michael Tokarev wrote:
> 
> Stephan Lagerholm wrote:
> >
> > Hi there,
> >
> > Im trying to install OWL on an old x86-P90 with 16 meg memory that are
> > unable to boot via CD-rom.
> >
> > Questions:
> >
> > 1. I have bootable redhat on the hd, can that be used in some way to
> >    force the machine to boot from cdrom?
> 
> If the kernel that is on your machine has CD-rom drivers compiled in
> (default for RedHat), you should be able to do so -- maybe.  Telling
> lilo to pass appropriate `root=/dev/hdX' argument to the kernel so
> it will try to mount your cdrom as root filesystem.  Better yet is
> to copy kernel from installation CD to your harddrive and tell lilo
> to use it as well as your RedHat's kernel, and use it to boot off the
> CD.  Just add
> 
>   image=/boot/owl-boot-kernel append="root=/dev/your-cd-rom"
> 
> to /etc/lilo.conf and call lilo to write new table.
> 
> But I can't say what other parameters should be passed to boot kernel,
> and where it can be found (I never installed Owl or any other linux
> distro this way, all my installations was done manually copying appropriate
> files to new HD and making it bootable).

You also may try to expiriment with

  (lilo.conf)
  other=/dev/your-cd-rom label=cdrom

and type `cdrom' at your LILO: prompt.  If this will work, it is the
most natural and simple method.  But I don't know if this will work
or not... ;)

> > 3. The boot floppy don't give the cdrom as an option to boot from. Have I
> >    missed something here?

A guess.  Should another boot-image be inside cd-rom?  I.e., when ISO gets
created, something should be placed into it's boot area -- something that
is sutable for booting off the cdrom, yes (El-torio boot ext)?  So such an
image should be available somewhere, and if one writes it to a floppy...
But again, I'm not sure, just a guess.

Regards,
 Michael.



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