Syslinux - Aug 2005 - Booting disk images with syslinux?

Is it possable to boot a diskimage with syslinux?

So often I run into bios upgrade disks images or can
easily create a disk image and would like an easy way
to just boot these images.

I know isolinux does this and I vagely remember using
it to make a bootable windows 95 cd back in the day.
It worked to.

It would be nice if I could just copy the disk image
to a usbstick and use syslinux to boot these images.
Is it possable?
And if so how do I add these to the config file

I tried

label dosdisk
kernel floppy.img

Is that not correct?

If someone has a better solution like with grub or
something I'd like a method that works on a usbstick
which I don't know how to do in grub or lilo both of
which I thought I was pretty good with but when it
comes to telling it where the image is ... ?
I couldn't figure a way to tell it the usbstick
/dev/sda1 just can't be right can it?
and isn't it going to differ? because sda only exists
when the usb-disk portion of the kernel is loaded right?


		
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>Is it possable to boot a diskimage with syslinux?
>
>So often I run into bios upgrade disks images or can
>easily create a disk image and would like an easy way
>to just boot these images.
>
>I know isolinux does this and I vagely remember using
>it to make a bootable windows 95 cd back in the day.
>It worked to.
>
>It would be nice if I could just copy the disk image
>to a usbstick and use syslinux to boot these images.
>Is it possable?
>And if so how do I add these to the config file
>
>I tried
>
>label dosdisk
>kernel floppy.img
Use memdisk from syslinux.

label dosdisk
kernel memdisk
append initrd=floppy.img

>Is it possable to boot a diskimage with syslinux?
>
>So often I run into bios upgrade disks images or can
>easily create a disk image and would like an easy way
>to just boot these images.
>
>I know isolinux does this and I vagely remember using
>it to make a bootable windows 95 cd back in the day.
>It worked to.
>
>It would be nice if I could just copy the disk image
>to a usbstick and use syslinux to boot these images.
>Is it possable?
>And if so how do I add these to the config file
>
>I tried
>
>label dosdisk
>kernel floppy.img
Use memdisk from syslinux.

label dosdisk
kernel memdisk
append initrd=floppy.img

thanks that works great.

Even though I use linux I help a lot of windows users
and I was curious how to tell them to do the
equivilant of "cat mbr.bin > /dev/sda"

under linux I did the following to build a usb
bootstick

fdisk /dev/sda
(I removed everything and created one fat16 partition
and selected it as active)
mkdosfs /dev/sda1
syslinux /dev/sda1
cat mbr.bin > /dev/sda

that works great but how would I tell a windows user
how to do that? any clues?
once its installed though any user can change it which
is nice.

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>Even though I use linux I help a lot of windows users
>and I was curious how to tell them to do the
>equivilant of "cat mbr.bin > /dev/sda"
>
>under linux I did the following to build a usb
>bootstick
>
>fdisk /dev/sda
>(I removed everything and created one fat16 partition
>and selected it as active)
>mkdosfs /dev/sda1
>syslinux /dev/sda1
>cat mbr.bin > /dev/sda
>
>that works great but how would I tell a windows user
>how to do that? any clues?
>once its installed though any user can change it which
>is nice.
I don't know that it's needed to "cat mbr.bin > /dev/sda",
but the DOS/Win versions of syslinux have an '-m' option.

syslinux -m f:

It writes an mbr to the disk.

On 8/12/05, Jeff Sadowski <jeff_sadowski at yahoo.com>
wrote:
> 
> Even though I use linux I help a lot of windows users
> and I was curious how to tell them to do the
> equivilant of "cat mbr.bin > /dev/sda"

... 

that works great but how would I tell a windows user
> how to do that? any clues?
> once its installed though any user can change it which
> is nice.
> 
> 
The equivalent Windows and DOS method of wiping the MBR with a clean one is 
"fdisk -mbr" in a console/DOS prompt (no quotes.)

Nazo wrote:
>On 8/12/05, Jeff Sadowski <jeff_sadowski at yahoo.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>Even though I use linux I help a lot of windows users
>>and I was curious how to tell them to do the
>>equivilant of "cat mbr.bin > /dev/sda"
>>    
>>
>
>  
>
you could probly code it yourself in a c32 file/module,
then put it in a menu, along with an explanation in boot.txt
>... 
>
>that works great but how would I tell a windows user
>  
>
>>how to do that? any clues?
>>once its installed though any user can change it which
>>is nice.
>>
>>    
>>

On Fri, Aug 12, 2005 at 12:21:59PM -0700, Jeff Sadowski wrote:
     <snip/> 
> thanks that works great.
> 
> Even though I use linux I help a lot of windows users
> and I was curious how to tell them to do the
> equivilant of "cat mbr.bin > /dev/sda"
Could the program "rawrite.exe" help you there?

Or "dd" ( http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/rawwrite/dd.htm )
from the same program writer?


Cheers
Geert Stappers

P.S.
Report your milage back.
For me and the archive :-)

On Sat, Aug 13, 2005 at 03:40:55PM +0200, Geert Stappers
wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 12, 2005 at 12:21:59PM -0700, Jeff Sadowski wrote:
>      <snip/> 
> > thanks that works great.
> > 
> > Even though I use linux I help a lot of windows users
> > and I was curious how to tell them to do the
> > equivilant of "cat mbr.bin > /dev/sda"
> 
> Could the program "rawrite.exe" help you there?
> 
> Or "dd" ( http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/rawwrite/dd.htm
)
> from the same program writer?
Telling that

 syslinux -m f:

did work, is also apriciated.


We have an archive to maintain.

Cheers
Geert Stappers