ISO Snapshots

[Mark Valentine]

> From: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd at xxxxxxxxx>
> Date: Sat 17 Jan, 2004
> Subject: Re: ISO Snapshots

> After some digging around, it looks like grub doesn't let you do this,
> but I find one other project that does claim to allow it:
> 
> http://btmgr.sourceforge.net/
> 
>    o  Booting from CD-ROM 
>       Smart BootManager supports booting from almost all kinds of IDE
>       ATAPI CD-ROMs, including PCMCIA CD-ROMs. You can let the BIOS
>       boot from C: only and assign a password for it, then you can
>       boot from CD-ROM with Smart BootManager. If you have a laptop
>       with a special PCMCIA CD-ROM which has no support for booting in
>       the BIOS, Smart BootManager can help you boot from it.
> 
> Sounds like exactly what Mark needs.  If he confirms that it works,
> perhaps the DragonFly site can include a link to this site, for those
> who don't have bootable CD-ROM drives.

It was worth a try, but no joy there.  It doesn't see the PCMCIA CD-ROM
drive, even after twiddling with the I/O ports (it wants a pair of ports
like the standard IDE channels use, but according to Windows Device Manager
this device uses only one, so I tried specifying it twice as EE0,EE0...).

Hmm, interestingly enough, FreeBSD 5.1 no longer sees the FREECOM PCCARD-IDE
like 4.x does.  5.2 has a fix but instead has problems with my network card,
sigh...  This is one reason I was hoping DragonFly would be useful on this
laptop (in addition to the appealing architecture, of course), since FreeBSD
4.x never had a problem.

I must admit I don't know how PCMCIA is supposed to work in terms of IDE
compatibility, but I suspect there's also something a little unusual about
the Freecom interface.

I wonder, though, if Smart BootManager might help with the other scenario
I mentioned, the headless server that can't boot from SCSI CD-ROM.  In
particular, whether its "keyboard buffer stuffing" feature would allow
booting from the standard CD using the serial console.  I suspect this
might not work for the same reason the btmgr documentation says you have
to recompile LILO not to drain the keyboard buffer.  I'll try to give it
a go.

		Cheers,

		Mark.

-- 
"Tigers will do ANYTHING for a tuna fish sandwich."
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