Re: [cobalt-developers] Can the RaQ boot from floppy or CD?

[Tim Hockin <thockin@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Norbert Bollow wrote:

> > If you attach a SCSI device (such as a CD), you can boot from it using
> > the ROM menu.
> 
> Great! - This is the kind of procedure that I'm looking for.
> 
> How do we come into the possession of a suitable boot CD?
> 
> Can you provide instructions for connecting an external CD drive
> to the RaQ and using the ROM menu to boot from it?


By popular demand, it is left on-list :)

Ack, I knew someone was going to test me on this :)  Untested, but it
works like this:

attach a SCSI CD-ROM
power up the system, holding the 'S'elect button.
you will get a menu that says "Select option"
press select until you see the "Config boot disk" option
press 'E'nter
you will see "Select boot disk"
press select until you see the device you want to use (let's assume
sda1)
press enter

Now, you can select "Boot from ROM" to boot the ROM-stored kernel, or
you can load a kernel off the SCSI device.  In either case, the system
expects to find a root filesystem on the device you selected.  If you
want a custom kernel, put it in /boot/vmlinux.gz.  If you want to use
the ROM kernel (safest), just provide a root FS.

Now, I haven't tried it with a CD (read only), so I have honestly NO
IDEA what will happen.  I have used other disk devices, and have had
success.

All this is, of course, not really supported.  It was provided for
emergency use, and hasn't had the rigorous testing that it would require
for us to push this as a guaranteed safety feature.

Tim

-- 
Tim Hockin
Software Engineer / OS Engineer
Cobalt Networks
thockin@xxxxxxxxxx