booting from ISO image on HD 159

After pivotroot, execsbin-init.

Stop. Mount has two arguments, a device and a directory.

In English (Unixish) people say they mount the device on the directory. Not the "on the device".

In the case of a loopback mount, the device is the loopback device. Before the actual mounting, the mount program sets up the buttociation between the loopback device and the underlying file (the iso image).

It seems like you are thinking that the "device-probing code" infers something from the fact that the link resides in thedev-directory? Or from the fact that the link has a name starting with "hd"?

What "device-probing code" are you referring to?

Also be aware that a hard link is nothing but another file name. That is, ifdev-hdd is a hard link todev-loop1, thendev-hdd anddev-loop1 are two equivalent names of the same file. There is no way to tell which name is the "right" one.

But wait a minute, to run an initrd, you need a kernel! If the kernel is on the CD, how can you boot it from an initrd???

I suppose you are first booting a kernel, and the special initrd, from some other device, but you want that kernel to boot another kernel?

In the following, I suppose you have the right kernel running.

What shell runs your linuxrc? You need one that has the capability to test the name of the kernel. Are you using nash? From nash's manpage, it seems nash cannot do this. Find a statically linked shell, or include in the initrd the files required for dynamic linking.

I suggest ash, it is much smaller:

$ lddbin-ash lib-ld-linux.so.2 (0x00b61000) $ lddbin-bash lib-ld-linux.so.2 (0x00b61000) $ ls -lbin-ash -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 98356 Jun 16 2004bin-ash $ ls -lbin-bash -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 686520 May 10 2005bin-bash

For dynamic linking you also needlib-ld-linux.so (a symbolic link) and whatever that link points to.

Does he actually know what he wants? It may be your job to help him know better what he wants.

Bios is not a good idea. A bios is very tightly adapted to the specific hardware of the computer, and cannot easily be transferred to other computers. Also, the bios is stored in a flash ram (it used to be a rom, then a prom or eprom, so it is often still referred to as a prom). I suppose this flash ram does not usually have much more capacity than required by the bios it contains. The special code you need will likely not fit in whatever free room remains.

Absolutely. You need a specialized boot loader that creates the initrd on the fly, extracting the required module from the iso image. If the module is not there, buttume it is compiled-in into the kernel itself.

English: "Why on earth". "Possible at all".

-Enrique