RE: [TCLUG:19968] Bootable Image Lilo and CDRW

[jrsmit2@uswest.com]

"I'd like to do the same thing, but I don't have a floppy drive in my
server.
So the SYSLINUX boot idea won't work."


No, no.  To make the bootable cd, you need a bootable floppy.  The way
bootable CD's work is that they "pretend" to be the floppy drive during the
boot process by taking a particular set of blocks off the CD and setting
that up as a sort of virtual floppy drive.

So you need to make a bootable floppy (you can even do a 2.88 meg floppy if
you've got one) image and write that to the cdrom.

Here are the steps:

1. Make bootable Linux floppy with SYSLINUX (saves you room over lilo and
lets you change things easier when and if your kernel changes)
2. create a directory that's going to be the root of your cdrom
3. make an isofs with mkisofs -b /path/to/boot/image (look up the options)
4. write the cdrom.

Once you get a floppy image, you can mount it as a loopback device and work
with it, but the BIOS will choke if it's not EXACTLY the same size as a
floppy, so the best thing to do is just dd one over.

I made my own install cd this way and it works grrreat.

Jer