Subject: Re: Booting only from CD
To: David TAILLANDIER <david.taillandier@domainename.com>
From: Jeremy C. Reed <reed@reedmedia.net>
List: netbsd-help
Date: 03/07/2002 17:02:16
On Thu, 7 Mar 2002, David TAILLANDIER wrote:

> Crossposted to <netbsd-help@netbsd.org>
>            and <netbsd-tech-kern@netbsd.org>

Probably not appropriate for kernel development discussions. So please
don't reply there.

> Since last week, I have the project to use those boxes without
> hard-drive ; only a CD for programs and a diskette for config files.
> I already done everything (hard-drive partition read-only, fetching
> config files from a write protected diskette, ram-drive, small kernel,
> etc).

Sounds interesting.

I am doing similar.

> I just don't know how to bootstrap 100% from CD. I found nowhere any
> documentation. May I have a look inside the source ?  (hard for me).

Look at /usr/src/distrib/i386/floppies; it has examples on building floppy
images that can be used to boot from CD.

There's a lot of different ways to do it. (I do without any ramdisk.)

> I know how to put a boot-loader + kernel on CD (just like on any
> diskette) but the kernel then read everything on the hard-drive as I
> don't know how to explain him to read the root from the CD.

Look at "root on" in your kernel config. I have:
config         netbsd  root on cd0a type cd0a dumps on none

> Any idea about a cool doc ?

Do some searches -- this has been discussed a few times.

I don't know of any docs, but I have typed 634 words about my setup. I
plan to publish some articles about this.

   Jeremy C. Reed
   http://www.reedmedia.net/