In message <87wtm0ooal.fsf@snark.piermont.com>, "Perry E. Metzger" writes:
>
>"Steven M. Bellovin" <smb@cs.columbia.edu> writes:
>> In message <8764tkq5op.fsf@snark.piermont.com>, "Perry E. Metzger" writes:
>>>
>>>"Steven M. Bellovin" <smb@cs.columbia.edu> writes:
>>>>>Ja'far Railton <ibn.richard@gmail.com> writes:
>>>>>> I am trying to get a Thinkpad R30 going running 2.0_STABLE from
>>>>>> known-good iso CD. I have a problem on boot when it gets to "agp0 at
>>>>>> pchb0" - it hangs. I googled to find that back in 2002-3 this was a
>>>>>> problem. One solution back then was to boot from floppy because floppy
>>>>>> kernel doesn't have AGP. Does anyone have any other advice?
>>>>>
>>>>>Just build a custom kernel without agp and boot it?
>>>>
>>>> Is it possible to boot alternate kernels?
>>>
>>>Yes, though you do need a machine to compile the alternate kernel
>>>on. Luckily, you can do that on a very wide variety of operating
>>>systems these days. You do have to learn how to build alternative
>>>install kernels/images, though.
>>
>> As I noted, there are six install kernels on the CD.  Can one of them 
>> be booted?
>
>On the current (old style) install CDs, not directly (you need to put
>the kernel onto a floppy or disk-on-key or something) because the El
>Torrito boot mechanism uses a disk image on the CD as the boot
>medium. (It is not particularly hard to copy one of the kernels into
>an FFS on a disk-on-key or what have you, but it isn't just a matter
>of typing the name at the prompt.)

But I thought that the floppy emulation image was boot-big.fs, not the 
actual kernel.  Certainly, that's the operand to -b in the mkisofs 
invocation.  That's the program that should be able to deal with a 
prompt.


		--Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb