Re: [pc110] installing small linux boot off pcmcia - HOWTO lilo?

Adam Lambert (adam nospam at scl.cwru.edu)
Tue, 23 Jan 2001 19:05:57 -0500

sorry, i was kinda sleepy when I wrote that.. I have a 48M flash,
and so the drive params below are for that size, not 32.

/a

On Tue, 23 Jan 2001 01:12:46 -0500, Adam Lambert wrote:

>I have lilo and a mini system installed on a 32M cflash. I have my
>home dir, /usr/local, and X11 installed on an 80M typeII flash.
>(ie - 80M drive is not needed for boot, mounted my cardmgr after system
>is up)
>
>i have dos installed on the internal cflash - i boot it by removing the
>32M cflash (32M in, boot linux via lilo, 32M out, boot dos on internal sundisk)
>
>I use a slackware 4 setup that I painstakenly paired down a couple years
>ago for this...
>
>booting with lilo was a pain, also... the pc110's BIOS is used in the
>begining of the boot process, but once the linux kernel loads, and begins
>to use its native IDE drivers, linux sees the drives according to their physical
>ide connections and not their BIOS redirections, and consequently
>changes the drive mapping that lilo saw (as it received from BIOS)
>(based on your boot order in the easy setup screen)
>
>so, I remap hda and hdb in a parameter to the kernel to be the order
>that lilo originally saw.
>
>it took a while to find the params for this 32M flash: 734,4,32
>
>so, my pertinent lilo.conf lines:
>boot = /dev/hdb
>root = /dev/hdb1
>disk = /dev/hda
> bios=0x81
>disk = /dev/hdb
> bios=0x80
>append="hdb=734,4,32"
>
>
>note: lilo and the kernel are both on the same disk, the 32M cflash.
>
>bios is set to boot first from the floppy, then ext cflash (HD2), then the
>internal flash (HD1)
>
>I never did get linux to be able to see both the internal flash and the
>external cflash at the same time.. I believe I read somewhere that
>the kernel stops looking for cflash devices after finding the first one,
>but never got around to verifying and/or patching.
>
>Shouldn't matter, but I have kernel 2.2.12 on the box.
>
>hope it helps
>adam
>
>
>
>
>
>On Mon, 22 Jan 2001 06:40:50 -0800, Fringe Ryder wrote:
>
>>I tried several years ago, but could not get a LILO load to work; I wound
>>up putting loadlin on the tiny internal RAM disk.
>>
>>At 10:18 AM 1/22/01 +0000, Prashant wrote:
>>>hi,
>>>
>>>So I have been trying to create a pure linux system
>>>boot off a pcmcia card on my pc110, ie no loadlin in
>>>dos as I did before. I am using a small linux
>>>distribution call MuLinux (see
>>>http://mulinux.nevalabs.org/).
>>>
>>>This here is the result of "fdisk /dev/hdc", ie fdisk
>>>of the pcmcia card when
>>>it is in the card reader of my desktop:
>>>
>>># fdisk /dev/hdc
>>>
>>>Command (m for help): p
>>>
>>>Disk /dev/hdc: 4 heads, 32 sectors, 1008 cylinders
>>>Units = cylinders of 128 * 512 bytes
>>>
>>> Device Boot Start End Blocks Id
>>>System
>>>/dev/hdc1 * 1 1008 64511+ 83
>>>Linux
>>>
>>>I created a mulinux floppy and then copied it to my
>>>compact flash (well,
>>>I did it in an even more round-about way, but here is
>>>a synopsis):
>>>
>>># cat /dev/fd0H1722 > /dev/hdc1
>>>
>>>I mounted the flash card:
>>>
>>># mount -t ext2 /dev/hdc1 /mnt/pcmcia0
>>>
>>>I then modified the mulinux lilo.conf file named
>>>"lilo.1722" to look like
>>>this: (note: the /boot/boot.b, etc. files do exist on
>>>the flash, I
>>>checked)
>>>
>>>=================================================
>>># lilo.conf for muLinux (build by mu script)
>>>#
>>>disk=/dev/hdc
>>> bios=0x80
>>> sectors=32
>>> heads= 4
>>> cylinders=1008
>>>boot=/dev/hdc1
>>>install=/mnt/pcmcia0/boot/boot.b
>>>map=/mnt/pcmcia0/boot/map
>>>message=/mnt/pcmcia0/boot/mulinux.msg
>>>backup=/dev/null
>>>
>>>read-write
>>>vga=normal
>>>prompt
>>>delay=40
>>>timeout=50
>>>
>>>image=/mnt/pcmcia0/boot/mulinuz
>>>label=mulinux
>>>root=/dev/hdb1
>>>append="INFO=1722 load_ramdisk=1 prompt_ramdisk=0
>>>ramdisk_size=4600 ramdisk_start=596 "
>>>=======================================================
>>>
>>>and then ran the mulinux version of lilo to install
>>>it:
>>>
>>># cat lilo.1722 | ./lilo -r /mnt/pcmcia0 -C -
>>>
>>>but I get this error:
>>>
>>>stat /dev/hdc: No such file or directory
>>>
>>>I get this error if I change hdc to hdc1:
>>>
>>>stat /dev/hdc1: No such file or directory
>>>
>>>I am sure my lilo.1722 is bad somehow.
>>>
>>>Can anyone see my problem? I know I have to change the
>>>append= to
>>>something like "hdb=noprobe hdb=1008,4,32" as well.
>>>(is that right?)
>>>
>>>What are the different device names on the pc110? Is
>>>this it:
>>>/dev/hda = 4mb flash
>>>/dev/hdb = compact flash 1
>>>/dev/hdc = compact flash 2
>>>? Do I use these device names in lilo in root=, or ...
>>>hm, a little
>>>confused here. What confuses me is what device names
>>>to use when in lilo,
>>>in editing the lilo.conf am I talking to lilo or to
>>>the boot loader...
>>>
>>>oh, I also have the pcmcia booting first in my pc110
>>>h/w config.
>>>
>>>thanks in advance
>>>
>>>Prashant
>>
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