On Tue, 2006-09-26 at 17:21 -0700, Charles Sliger wrote:

...

Are you trying to install on a machine that doesn't allow booting from CD? There is a boot floppy using smart boot manager that allows you to boot from a cd on systems that don't have the option. http://btmgr.webframe.org/

[chaz> ] Correct, the BIOS will not boot from the CD. I'll take a look at the smart boot manager. I was assuming that the CentOS folks had a canned solution, probably using grub.

Untested as my machines all boot from CDs, and some don't even have floppies any more, but you can create a grub floppy, optionally with a menu interface. See script below.

After creating the floppy, mount it and edit the grub/grub.conf file to contain the following stanza (last two parameters on the kernel line may not be necessary, ramdisk_size might need to be increased):

title CentOS Installer CD root (cd) kernel (cd)/isolinux/vmlinuz ramdisk_size=8192 askmethod upgradeany initrd (cd)/isolinux/initrd.img

------------------------------- cut ---------------------------- #!/bin/bash # mkgrubdisk # # Written by Phil Schaffner p.r.schaffner@ieee.org # based on mkbootdisk by Erik Troan ewt@redhat.com

pause=yes format=yes device=/dev/fd0 unset verbose

GRUBDIR=/boot/grub MOUNTDIR=/tmp/mkgrubmenu PATH=/sbin:$PATH export PATH

VERSION=0.1

usage () { cat >&2 <<EOF usage: `basename $0` [--version] [--noprompt] [--noformat] [--device <devicefile>] [--grubdir <dir>] [--verbose -v] (ex: `basename $0` --device /dev/fd1) EOF exit $1 }

while [ $# -gt 0 ]; do case $1 in --device) shift device=$1 ;; --grubdir) shift GRUBDIR=$1 ;; --help) usage 0 ;; --noprompt) unset pause ;; --noformat) unset format ;; -v) verbose=true ;; --verbose) verbose=true ;; --version) echo "mkgrubdisk: version $VERSION" exit 0 ;; *) usage ;; esac

shift done

[ -d $GRUBDIR ] || { echo "$GRUBDIR is not a directory!" >&2 exit 1 }

if [ -e "$device" ]; then { [ -n "$pause" ] && { echo -n "Insert a" [ -n "$format" ] || echo -n " vfat formatted" echo " disk in $device." echo "Any information on the disk will be lost." echo -n "Press <Enter> to continue or ^C to abort: " read aline }

[ -n "$format" ] && { [ -n "$verbose" ] && echo "Formatting $device... " fdformat $device || exit 0 mkfs.msdos $device > /dev/null 2>/dev/null || exit 0 [ -n "$verbose" ] && echo "done." }

rm -rf $MOUNTDIR mkdir $MOUNTDIR || { echo "Failed to create $MOUNTDIR" >&2 exit 1 } [ -d $MOUNTDIR ] || { echo "$MOUNTDIR is not a directory!" >&2 exit 1 }

mount -wt vfat $device $MOUNTDIR || { rmdir $MOUNTDIR exit 1 }

mkdir $MOUNTDIR/grub

[ -n "$verbose" ] && echo -n "Copying $GRUBDIR files... " cd $GRUBDIR cp -a stage1 stage2 grub.conf device.map splash.xpm.gz $MOUNTDIR/grub [ -n "$verbose" ] && echo "done."

[ -n "$verbose" ] && echo -n "Setting up GRUB... " grub --device-map=$GRUBDIR/device.map --batch <<EOF root (fd0) setup (fd0) quit EOF

[ -n "$verbose" ] && echo "done."

umount $MOUNTDIR rmdir $MOUNTDIR [ -n "$verbose" ] && echo "done setting up GRUB." echo "Edit (fd0)/grub/grub.conf to customize." echo "May want to use splashimage=(fd0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz" } else echo "$device does not exist" fi ------------------------------- cut ----------------------------

Phil

Charles Sliger wrote:

[chaz> ] The Smart Boot Manager web site seems to be broken. At least the download links are broken. I've tried with both Linux and Windoz systems using 3 different browsers. Same behavior. Clicking on the link just redisplays the page.

Try http://btmgr.webframe.org/download.html

James Pearson

You could also try to get SmartBoot from Slackware pages at

http://www.slackware.at/data/slackware-9.0/isolinux/sbootmgr/

(pointed to from RULE list archive: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/rule-list/2003-08/msg00007.html )

Unfortunately SmartBoot is a rather abandoned project now, but it works pretty well for IDE CD-ROMs.

Wojtek

On Tue, 26 Sep 2006, Charles Sliger wrote:

Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2006 17:37:07 -0700 From: Charles Sliger chaz@bctonline.com Reply-To: CentOS mailing list centos@centos.org To: 'CentOS mailing list' centos@centos.org Subject: RE: [CentOS] Re: Install Using Floppy/CD

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-----Original Message----- From: centos-bounces@centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org] On Behalf Of Scott Silva Sent: Tuesday, September 26, 2006 12:38 PM To: centos@centos.org Subject: [CentOS] Re: Install Using Floppy/CD

Charles Sliger spake the following on 9/26/2006 12:25 PM:

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Is there a doc that describes how to create a floppy that will boot and then switch over to the installation CD?

It looks to me like this should be possible using grub on the floppy.

Are you trying to install on a machine that doesn't allow booting from CD? There is a boot floppy using smart boot manager that allows you to boot from a cd on systems that don't have the option. http://btmgr.webframe.org/

[chaz> ] The Smart Boot Manager web site seems to be broken. At least the download links are broken. I've tried with both Linux and Windoz systems using 3 different browsers. Same behavior. Clicking on the link just redisplays the page.

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