Boot PC from Compact Flash

[Peter Stuge]

On Tue, Apr 27, 2004 at 10:19:24PM -0700, manisha s wrote:
> Hi All,
> I m new to this mailing list.
> 
> I want to boot my laptop from 128Mb Compact Flash(CF)
> Card.
> On laptop i have already RedHat 9 with kernel version
> 2.4.22.

This has little to do with LinuxBIOS I'm afraid.


> I downloaded the pebble linux distribution and
> successsfully downloaded (wrote) this on to the CF.
> 
> The CF card is available as /dev/sdb on the linux
> through CF card reader/writer.

Your CF reader probably connects via USB and the usb-storage layer
in Linux presents it as a SCSI device.


> I changed /etc/grub.conf file so as to include the CF
> card
> 
> title Pebble(Pebble)
>         root (hd0,1)
>         kernel /mnt/pebble/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.22-pebble 
> ro root=/dev/sdb1
>         
> title Red Hat Linux (2.4.22)
>         root (hd0,1)
>         kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.22  ro root=/dev/hda2
>         initrd /boot/initrd-2.4.22.img
> 
> 
> should i copy the vmlinuz-2.4.22-pebble to /boot
> directory?

GRUB does not include a USB stack. It can not load the kernel from CF.


> should i change other than this?
> 
> plz shed some light on this issue?

If you really want to boot from the CF, get a 2.5" IDE-CF adapter,
search this mailing list archive for URL.

If you want to know whether LinuxBIOS could run on your laptop, which
unfortunately is unlikely due to the high degree of customization
common in laptop mainboards, you should send us lspci -v output.


//Peter