[vox-tech] booting off cd help

[Ken Bloom]

On 2003.05.04 17:23, Mark K. Kim wrote:
> On Sun, 4 May 2003, Ken Bloom wrote:
> 
> > On 2003.05.04 10:22, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:
> ==8<--
> > > how does the boot loader know to start reading data off a
> > > different
> > > device?
> > >
> >
> > I'm not sure how it does it. (And I haven't experimented with it
> either
> > to ensure that it really works. I'll take Mark Kim's word for it.)
> 
> I've never done it myself on Linux either.  But I've done it with a
> Windows98 install because the CD drive wasn't bootable (old BIOS.)
> 
> With the Windows system, the bootable floppy image on the CD booted in
> DOS, and loaded a bunch of CD drivers, then "mounted" the CD drive and
> ran the setup program on the CD drive.
> 
> I'd imagine the bootable floppy image on Linux loads a minimal kernel
> with
> the necessary CD driver and run the install program on the CD.  But
> it's
> not like I poked around to find out if that's how it works.
> 
> Anyway, as far as I understand that's how it works so it should work,
> but
> you never know! ^_^;
> 
> -Mark

I wasn't counting on you to tell me how it works. I'm just taking your 
word for it that it *does* work. (My guess is that the initrd on the 
floppy image does the grunt work of identifying the cd-rom drive.)

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