[techtalk] Running Linux from a zip disk.

Magni Onsoien magnio at pvv.ntnu.no
Thu Mar 22 00:03:21 EST 2001


jenn at simegen.com:
> The biggest question is whether the BIOS is set up to boot from
> zip disks. And if you can change the BIOS to boot from the zip
> disk without any hassles - and without 'messing up much' with 
> the computers.
> 
> I'm not terribly familiar with zip disks (make that 'not at all')
> but if they're basically portable hard drives, I can't see them
> being any different. Provided the BIOS will boot from them.

What about booting from a floppy disk, with rootfs on the floppy?
That should work, I think. Maybe. (I have never used a zip disk)
Of course the sysadmins may (wisely ;)) have chosen to protect
againstbooting from anything but a harddrive, but it's more likely that
floppy boot is available than zip boot.
Make kernel, remember support for zip ("Generic SCSI device", I think),
rdev the kernel to use rootfs on /dev/sda (or b if there is another
scsi-disk in the box),  set up lilo etc.

By the way:
How fast are zip disks actually? What about floppy disks?


Magni :)
-- 
sash is very good for you.




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