[CentOS] booting from a +2TB disk

[Andreas Rogge]

Wouldn't it be much easier to use an IDE Flash Module for that?
You can get 128 MB IDE Flash for direct plugging to the ATA-Connector on
the mainboard for as few as 30 € (which is definitely not an issue, if
you have disk-arrays greater than 2 TB...).
You could then use this thing for /boot and your bootloader. As it is
presented to the system as a "normal" IDE-drive, you don't have to trick
the OS.

You can also buy two CF-to-ATA Adapters, build them into the case, plug
them into different ATA-Ports, make them a RAID-1 Device-Mapper device
and configure your BIOS to try to boot from either one (i.e. whichever
is still alive). This way you even get redundancy for your bootloader in
case of CF-Card failure (which is imho quite unlikely...).

Ah and btw... if you're insane enough, you can put 2 GB CF-Cards into
those adapters and install a rescue system - just in case your Disk-
Array dies...

Or you just use one adapter accessible from the machine's front panel.
You could then boot anything you want (e.g. your Restore-System, your
Weekend's Game-Server or whatever) just by  rebooting the machine with a
different CF-Card.

So far... this is all theory-only, but I don't see any problems with
this (nevertheless your mileage with the "don't try to boot from broken
IDE-Drives"-Configuration will vary)

Regards,
Andreas

Am Samstag, den 03.09.2005, 11:27 -0500 schrieb Les Mikesell:
> 
> 
> Can you boot a system like this from a CD?  If so, are there any
> instructions for making one that would have the usual contents
> of /boot, including the potentially custom initrd image?  Seems
> like a useful thing to be able to do even on smaller systems.
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