How to make cd to Boot external Firewire PCI HD with Linux installed

newtovanilla · 05-05-2008, 08:49 PM

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...+grub+external

That Linux post is what I am trying to do. I want to find the manual or how to that will tell me how I can make a cd that I can boot the Linux install on a Firewire PCI EIDE HD that I asked about in another post:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...odules-639860/

Could someone tell me what link can tell how I can make the cd that will boot this when the BIOS does not see it but Linux can see it? I also need to add the module "sdb2" to see the Firewire and I did not figure out how to do that to the cd.

Could you tell me where LQ has posts that answer this? I found the one above and it said that you can do it, but did not give a link for it. I am new to Linux and do not know the words well so it is hard to find things on google. Could you tell me what to search for or what link has it?

Quote:

timeout 10
color black/cyan yellow/cyan
gfxmenu (hd0,0)/boot/gfxmenu
default 0

title linux
kernel (hd0,0)/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.20-default root=/dev/sdb1 resume=/dev/sdb5 splash=silent vga=788
initrd (hd0,0)/boot/initrd.img

title failsafe
kernel (hd0,0)/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.20-default root=/dev/sda1 failsafe
initrd (hd0,0)/boot/initrd.img

/dev/sda1 / ext3 relatime 1 1
/dev/sda6 /home ext3 relatime 1 2
/dev/cdrom /media/cdrom auto umask=0022,users,ro,noauto,exec,iocharset=utf8 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy auto umask=0022,users,noauto,exec,iocharset=utf8,flush 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/sda5 swap swap defaults 0 0

Disk /dev/sda: 33.8 GB, 33820284928 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4111 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x001769c3

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 1019 8185086 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 1020 4111 24836490 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 1020 1528 4088511 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6 1529 4111 20747916 83 Linux

Simon Bridge · 05-06-2008, 01:02 AM

You want to boot from a drive, visible to linux, but which has no bios support?
The standard approach is to use the smart boot manager (SBM). GIYF

If you want to use a linux live CD to do this, then you want to remaster the CD to include the option, say, as part of it's grub.conf/menu.lst file. How you do this depends on the specific CD - the distributors usually have notes about this under "remaster" or "creating custom".

More robust would be to create a small linux /boot partition on the internal HDD... use this to dual-boot normally.

newtovanilla · 05-06-2008, 01:44 AM

Quote:

You want to boot from a drive, visible to linux, but which has no bios support?

Yup.

Quote:

http://btmgr.sourceforge.net/about.html

This looks like it can do it from the about page for Smart Boot Manager. I tried to RTFM for SBM. There was no M.

Quote:

http://btmgr.sourceforge.net/index.p...=document.html
An error has been encountered in accessing this page.

1. Server: btmgr.sourceforge.net
2. URL path: /index.php3
3. Error notes: File does not exist: /home/groups/b/bt/btmgr/htdocs/index.php3
4. Error type: 404
5. Request method: GET
6. Request query string: body=document.html
7. Time: 2008-05-05 23:36:48 PDT (1210055808)

Reporting this problem: The problem you have encountered is with a project web site hosted by SourceForge.net. This issue should be reported to the SourceForge.net-hosted project (not to SourceForge.net).

Quote:

while keeping its size no more than 30K bytes.

I can boot from a floppy with SBM. Could that work to boot the Firewire PCI EIDE HD with Linux installed on it that has no BIOS support? Does SBM see Firewire? I could not find out in the documentation.

Simon Bridge · 05-06-2008, 02:13 AM

I know what you mean - but I have never tried this, and have no firewire devices to test. So you'll just have to try it and see.

See the following...
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/li...-fireboot.html
... scroll down to where it discusses booting from firewire devices.

newtovanilla · 05-07-2008, 04:08 AM

Thank you for the comment. This LQ post was helpful.

Quote:

http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/Initrd

I am not asking you to test this. I think that it could be tested with USB. I have not tried that. I am still trying to figure out the Firewire.

Quote:

I tried to RTFM for SBM. There was no M.

The web now has the manual and files. I tried to run the Linux binary, but nothing happened. I tried this: "sbminst-static -t us -d /dev/fd0". I had a floppy in the drive. There was no error. There was no action on the floppy.

I am trying to figure out the rest of getting the kernel to boot. I do not know about the kernel boot process. I have some books to take a look at.

This link was helpful:

Quote:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/li...-fireboot.html

He has a script in there for "linuxrc". How can I modify that script to not use "devfsd"? I do not have the /bin/devfsd, the command "which devfsd" returns no such file. Is there a way to do this without using devfsd? Could I just put in the directory name for the Firewire PCI?

Quote:

# loop rescanning the scsi bus + rerunning devfsd
retries=5
i=1
until [ -e $REAL_ROOT ]
do
if [ $i -gt $retries ]
then
echo "Unable to mount real root ($REAL_ROOT) - Giving up!"
/bin/ash
exit
fi

echo "Real root ($REAL_ROOT) not found, retrying ($i)"
sleep 1
echo "scsi add-single-device 0 0 0" > /proc/scsi/scsi
echo "scsi add-single-device 1 0 0" > /proc/scsi/scsi
echo "scsi add-single-device 2 0 0" > /proc/scsi/scsi
/bin/devfsd /dev -np
i=$((i+1))
done

Simon Bridge · 05-07-2008, 07:16 AM

Hmmm... you'd seem to be using udev... rats, I was hoping the ibm site would be more up to date.

My personal method is to install a small linux, say the /boot partition, to the internal drive - then dual boot.

newtovanilla · 05-17-2008, 06:34 PM

Quote:

My personal method is to install a small linux, say the /boot partition, to the internal drive - then dual boot.

Can I do this with a cd by creating a initrd that will dual boot a small linux that will then boot the firewire device? How? I have tried to make an initrd with the modules and a linuxrc to load the modules, and it does boot from the cd and load the modules. It just does not then boot the firewire device. How can I get it to do that?