Re: boot ext2 on vfat

Le sam 20/03/2004 à 18:55, Christian Perle a écrit :
> Hi mammique,
> 
> On Thu, Mar 18, 2004 at 21:02:54 +0100, mammique wrote:
> 
> > i'd like to know if it's possible, if anybody thought/tried, to boot
> > from a virtual ext2 partition (containing the system) wich is file on
> > vfat ? The file could be created from a knoppix-cd during HD
> 
> It is possible. I just did a quick and dirty hack on an older version
> of knx-hdinstall. I hardcoded the parts for creating and mounting
> the ext2 container file (knx.img). After the file copying step, you must
> change the rootfs fstab entry to:
> /dev/loop0  /  ext2  defaults,errors=remount-ro  0  1
> 
> The tricky part is the initial ramdisk. It must mount the vfat
> partition first, then assign the ext2 container file to /dev/loop0
> and tell the kernel to use /dev/loop0 as root device:
> 
> #!/bin/sh
> # this is /linuxrc
> insmod /modules/loop.o
> mount -t vfat /dev/hda1 /mnt/dosfs
> # use knx.img for loop0
> losetup /dev/loop0 /mnt/dosfs/knx.img
> mount -t proc proc /proc
> # 1792 = 7*256+0 = loop0
> echo 1792 > /proc/sys/kernel/real-root-dev
> umount /proc
> 

How to install this way this the installer ?

> Kernel and initrd must be loaded off the vfat partition by loadlin.exe
> running in real dos mode. Note that this is only possible when using
> Win95/98/ME.
> 
> WinNT/2k/XP do not have real dos mode, so loadlin.exe cannot run.
> 

Could lilo or grub run it before WinNT-like runs ?

> bye,

Bye :-)

>   Chris
-- 
mammique <[email protected]>