Re: Little-known features of El Torito Spec
H. Peter Anvin (hpa@transmeta.com)
29 Aug 1999 06:12:00 GMT
Followup to: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9908290752130.10465-100000@speedy.shearer.org>
By author: <dan@shearer.org>
In newsgroup: linux.dev.kernel
>
> Anyone who has sweated to build a 2.88 CD boot image from syslinux and the
> skinniest fat kernel possible will understand why I'm posting this. There
> is only a minor impact on the kernel, but overall it could make quite a
> difference to the way Linux installations are done.
>
> I was reading through the El Torito specification a few months ago in
> order to debug something and noticed that the excellent mkisofs doesn't
> support some very interesting features of it. Neither does any other CD
> image mastering program I know of. As a result every x86 OS installation
> facility is somewhat crippled. Linux isn't as crippled as NT from this
> perspective, but still, booting from CD is nothing like home.
>
However, NT 4.0 I believe use no-emulation mode, so that one you would
expect to work.
By the way, the El Torito spec is available on Phoenix' web site
(www.phoenix.com) together with a whole slew of other useful specs.
I'm planning to have no-emulation support in by new boot loader
(preliminary name "lbcon"); it will have access to the CD filesystem
itself. Currently, mkisofs doesn't support no-emulation mode; that of
course needs to be added.
-hpa
--
<hpa@transmeta.com> at work, <hpa@zytor.com> in private!
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