Syslinux - May 2004 - special boot disk.

I have been asked to build a Linux Installation lab. The lab has to 
support the installation of SUSE Enterprise 8, Red Hat (Industrial 
strength), Fedora, Debian and Mandrake and probably a couple of others. 
Here is the catch:

1.	The machine(s) will only have a virtual floppy attached so 
installation will be via network (we?ll supply the mirror).
2.	It must be completely automatic ? one floppy has to be able to boot 
all versions of Linux. The user can remove the virtual floppy but can?t 
insert a second one.

What this means is that I need a multi-stage install: 1. Boot from 
floppy, 2. Query the user as to which system to install. 3. Mount a 
remote directory (or wget into a Ram disk) and boot the CD image 
(anaconda, Yast etc).

When researching how to do this it occurred to me that it?s probably 
already been done with syslinux. Any clues, suggestions, pointers or 
code is welcome.

Cheers
-- 
Steve Glines
voice: 978-952-6340         www.is-cs.com
   fax: 978-952-8524         145 Foster Street
  cell: 617-549-7274         Littleton MA 01460

In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice, but in 
practice there is.

define "boot the cd image". Syslinux has no "boot from ISO
image" functionality,
but many OS's can mount an ISO.

Syslinux.cfg can easily boot multiple items.

SAY 1) Boot Redhat 
SAY 2) Boot Novell/SUSE 
SAY 3) Boot Debian 
SAY 4) Boot Fedora
SAY 5) Boot Mandrake

then same kernel, same initrd, but depending on kernel loading arguments you
start a different installation procedure.
(mount a samba share, start the network installer program)
KNOPPIX (Debian Live-cd) does the same. see www.knoppix.net

Bernd


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