Re: I Can't boot Linux through my CF!

From: Michael Schnell (mschnell_at_lumino_dot_de_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 02/24/05 

Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2005 09:42:05 +0100

SAber Khamooshi wrote:
> yes
> I couldn't boot it as a bootable DOS device !
> maybe DOS doesn't support USB FLASH !

DOS accesses all drives through the BIOS, so it does not know whether
it's USB or not.

Do you remember remote booting DOS e.g. from a Novell-Server or using
BootP on a Linux/Unix Server ?

Here you use an Ethernet card that has a PROM that installs as a BIOS
extension (you know: before booting from a disk, the BIOS calls all
functions it finds that identify by a special signature at one of
several addresses in the 16 Bit address range.)

The Ethernet card BIOS extension (with the help of the server) converts
a file on the server into a drive on the remote machine. Unmodified DOS
boots from this fake drive just fine. In the autoexec.bat on that remote
drive you install the network access software (client) for DOS and now
you can access any data on the server.

Linux can't work that way, as a BIOS drive can only be accessed in 16
bit mode that Linux does not support. So Linux needs to install it's own
hardware access to the (USB) drive, while DOS does not need anything
like that.

Thus the Linux boot process is much more complicated. Here at first a 16
Bit program needs to load the next stage into RAM via the BIOS interface
and this stage needs to install 32 bit drivers for Linux use.

If you say you can't even boot DOS from the USB device something is
wrong in a very early stage, that has not much to do with booting _Linux_

-Michael

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Windows multiboot (aaargh!)
    ... I've done that with my DOS floppy. ... it seems that creating a Linux boot disk is a rather ... swapping drives round can upset them. ...
    (Debian-User)
  • Re: Unattend over network with USB boot device
    ... I have been planning to play with this, too, but my USB ... DOS should only see the drive as C: ... SYSLINUX+memdisk to boot a virtual floppy, ... Linux system and run winnt.exe under dosemu. ...
    (microsoft.public.win2000.setup_deployment)
  • Re: Anyone tried basiclinux?
    ... Don't want to see the dos prompt anymore. ... You are not prepared to use linux yet. ... and wiped out the entire install. ... Boot floppies are a legacy thing nowadays, ...
    (alt.linux)
  • Re: Windows multiboot (aaargh!)
    ... > - Make a DOS boot floppy with FDISK and FORMAT on, ... The Linux boot floppy is a bit more tricky. ... > partition, ...
    (Debian-User)
  • Re: USB Voodoo?
    ... You have to make a bootable CD and boot into DOS to use it to image ... USB drives. ... Ext2 and Linux swap partitions. ... my USB Linux drives, and has no problems with the Linux partition formats. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)