Larry Riedel
2004-Oct-27 01:46 UTC
[syslinux] MBR ## SYSLINUX ## Linux (before first partition)
On a boot drive on a PC, I would like to boot Linux by having it at the beginning of the disk, right after the MBR and SYSLINUX, _before_ the first partition, and _not_ in a filesystem. Essentially I want something like booting a floppy with a kernel built using "make fdimage", but with a hard disk instead of a floppy disk. The first partition would probably start at the second cylinder; for a drive with 255*63*512 bytes/cyl, that should be enough room for a kernel and a little initrd/initramfs. Can I do this easily using SYSLINUX, and if so, is it something fairly straightforward to setup (does not require much deviation from typical usage)? Larry
H. Peter Anvin
2004-Oct-27 05:23 UTC
[syslinux] MBR ## SYSLINUX ## Linux (before first partition)
Larry Riedel wrote:> On a boot drive on a PC, I would like to boot Linux > by having it at the beginning of the disk, right > after the MBR and SYSLINUX, _before_ the first > partition, and _not_ in a filesystem. Essentially I > want something like booting a floppy with a kernel > built using "make fdimage", but with a hard disk > instead of a floppy disk. The first partition would > probably start at the second cylinder; for a drive > with 255*63*512 bytes/cyl, that should be enough > room for a kernel and a little initrd/initramfs. > > Can I do this easily using SYSLINUX, and if so, is > it something fairly straightforward to setup (does > not require much deviation from typical usage)?You'd have to massively hack it, so no, it's not easy; you'd be better off writing the code from scratch probably. You're not explaining why you want to do this, there might be an easier way to accomplish what you want to do. -hpa