Syslinux - Jul 2002 - syslinux/memlinux to boot FreeBSD boot.flp?

Hi all,

I am trying to boot a FreeBSD installation on a system which
	a) has no FD nor CD
	b) only a HD and a DiskOnChip (www.msys.com)

The current boot environment uses a modified Syslinux (1.62) that knows
a magic ?swap? kernel which will boot off the HD as the DOC
steals the HD?s device# (or so I am told). This allows the
syslinux on the DOC to offer special boot options before
falling back to a normal HD disk boot.

boot.flp is a 2.88MB boot floppy image directly from FreeBSD?s floppies
subdir.


I have tried
	a) directly booting the floppyimage by renaming it boot.cbt

	label fbsd
	kernel boot.cbt

		I get a message that the image is of the wrong size

	b) using memdisk (from syslinux 1.75)

	label fbsd
	kernel memdisk
	append image=boot.flp

		It tells me that the image/kernel is invalid


Can Syslinux boot arbitrary floppy images, and if so how?

The DiskOnChip currently is seen under Linux as /dev/msys/fla1
I could partition it so that a second partion /dev/msys/fla2
is available, onto which I could copy boot.flp. Would I
be able to configure something like lilo?s ?other = ? to
then boot that image?

Does anyone have any other idea how I could get FreeBSD onto this
system?

thanks

-- 
Mathias Koerber
mathias at koerber.org

Mathias Koerber wrote:
> 
> Can Syslinux boot arbitrary floppy images, and if so how?
>
Sort of.  You can use memdisk, but you lose that memory (unless you 
modify your FreeBSD kernel to reclaim it.)

	-hpa

--On Sunday, July 07, 2002 12:46:54 AM -0700 "H. Peter Anvin" 
<hpa at zytor.com> wrote:
> Mathias Koerber wrote:
>>
>> Can Syslinux boot arbitrary floppy images, and if so how?
>>
>
> Sort of.  You can use memdisk, but you lose that memory (unless you
> modify your FreeBSD kernel to reclaim it.)
Hmm. Right now Syslinux (or memdisk? not sure) always complains about
an invalid or corrupt kernel image file with

	label f
	  kernel memdisk
	  append initrd=boot.flp

It does not even try to boot that image. I am using syslinux 1.62 and 
memdisk
from 1.75 !


-- 
Mathias Koerber
mathias at koerber.org