[Techtalk] NFS Booting from LILO

[MMP - Barb Fox]

I have a Pentium I laptop that is missing it's original floppy drive.
The internal CD-ROM is not bootable.  There is an old, but
working version of linux on the laptop, but I want to wipe it out
and load vectorlinux.  So the problem is that I have no
bootable device except the hard drive.  It has only one (/)
partition, so I don't know how I could shrink the active root
partition and create another one to "boot" to.  Second
thought:

I have seen some lilo references that appear to tell lilo to boot
from NFS, but I can't get them to work.  Anybody have any
experience here?

lilo.conf --->

image = /some/new/root/kernel/ide
(What do I put here?  This fails when I run lilo, because I WANT
it to boot a file on an NFS server and lilo looks for this path on
the local drive.  I think I should choose vector linux's ide kernel
supplied on the iso image called ide.)

root = /dev/nfs
(this is supposed to be some "fake" device that may need to be
created with a
       mknod /dev/nfs c 0 255
but other documentation said
make it the floppy and put a bootable image on the floppy, but
I don't have a floppy...?)

append = "nfsroot = nfs-server-ip:/some/new/root
     nfsaddress = laptop-ip:nfs-server-ip:gateway-ip:netmask:hostname"

(but when I plug in the values, I get some syntax errors from lilo.  Do
I need a command or semicolon between nfsroot and nfsaddress?)

also, what do I put for
boot = xxxx              ?

As you can see, I have more questions than answers.  Is it possible
to tell lilo to boot from NFS with NO local boot devices?

Barb Fox
mmp_fox at bellsouth.net