On Wed, 24 Feb 2010, Paul Bransford wrote:
> Eben King wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 24 Feb 2010, Paul Bransford wrote:
>>
>>> Eben King wrote:
>>>
>>>> Ultimately, I'm going to use this card in an IDE -> CF adapter as a
>>>> boot drive. In the meantime, I need to configure it on my machine.
>>>> Is it possible to have VMware Player treat it as a bare drive so I can
>>>> "boot" (in vmplayer) from a Linux install CD and have the installed OS
>>>> run correctly once it's in its destination? I'd like to do this
>>>> without shutting down if possible.
>>
>>> If you can boot grub from IDE or CD, you can try chainloading to the usb
>>> CF reader. I chainload servers to USB sticks all the time at my
>>> workplace datacenter. Pretty sure the CF readers are class-compliant
>>> mass storage.
>>
>> OK, I see how that (done on a vmdk, yes?) will boot from the card e.g. to
>> test the installation, modulo the difference virtualization incurs.
>> Will it also, outside the bootloader environment, give vmplayer access to
>> the card as if it were an IDE/SCSI disk so I can install an OS to it?
> Once the kernel loads, it shouldn't matter.
Yabbut how do I get the kernel _on_ there? Just copy it? What all does it
need to boot? A bootloader, /etc, parts of /var, what else?
I did "connect" from mplayer, ran the Ubuntu installer in there on /dev/sdb
(jeez the partitioner is SLOW), and it went through the motions. All the
files are on there, but it's not bootable. vmplayer either can't really
boot from "Removable Devices" or the installer failed to install GRUB.
Do USB devices have the same bug floppies did 3-8 years ago (maybe still do,
I haven't used floppies much since) where Linux couldn't write block 0, so
it couln't make a bootable device?
> The root issue is that the BIOS (virtual or not) doesn't see it as
> bootable, and grub works around that. Assuming the bios sees it and just
> doesn't support booting it.
It at least pretends to allow it.
--
A Higgs boson is sitting at the bar when the phone rings. He says to
the bartender "If that's a physicist, tell him you've not seen me."
(maybe by KW in AFCA)
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