DSL Ideas and Suggestions :: for floppyless people

if you don't have a floppydrive and you can't boot from usb. then i assume your talking about booting from HD.
why can't you just boot from HD?
For some reason, you want to boot from HD but read the boot files from a USB drive?

or perhaps you want to trick the bios into thinking the usb is really a floppy?

One possible scenario:

If someone has a nearly full HD (like XP and mp3's..) and wants to boot DSL from usb for saving settings and so, their BIOS cannot boot from usb and they either have no floppy drive or think it is too slow..
And 'cause normal boot loaders can't boot usb, then this would be kinda elegant solution, wouldn't it?

Quote

For some reason, you want to boot from HD but read the boot files from a USB drive?

Exactly. Well, not me, but it could be advertised in the wiki or so..

I think you're getting a bit mixed up curaga.

When you are using a "fromusb" bootfloppy, you are booting from the floppy itself, and NOT the usb.
It passes on the "fromusb" cheatcode to have DSL look for the main base image on a usb.

This is the same as using any bootloader and using the same cheatcode.

okay, since you've confirmed a HD boot, there are two more stages. To load the boot files and To load the knoppix image.
I'm not sure if you can specify the location of the boot files from syslinux, but they can certainly be specfied with a dos/loadlin boot.

The location of the knoppix image can also specified either on the bootline, or syslinux.cfg or as part of the dos/loadlin boot.

Yes, this will speed up the boot. but are you sure you can't spare another 52mb on the hard disk? you can still restore/save settings on the usb drive with 'fromhd' cheatcode.

It's just an alternate solution which could be listed on the wiki...

Next Page...
original here.