| ISOLINUX |
| |
| A bootloader for Linux using ISO 9660/El Torito CD-ROMs |
| |
| Copyright (C) 1994-2001 H. Peter Anvin |
| |
| This program is provided under the terms of the GNU General Public |
| License, version 2 or, at your option, any later version. There is no |
| warranty, neither expressed nor implied, to the function of this |
| program. Please see the included file COPYING for details. |
| |
| ---------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
| ISOLINUX is a boot loader for Linux/i386 that operates off ISO 9660/El |
| Torito CD-ROMs in "no emulation" mode. This avoids the need to create |
| an "emulation disk image" with limited space (for "floppy emulation") |
| or compatibility problems (for "hard disk emulation".) |
| |
| This documentation isn't here yet, but here is enough that you should |
| be able to test it out: |
| |
| Make sure you have a recent enough version of mkisofs. I recommend |
| mkisofs 1.13 (distributed with cdrecord 1.9), but 1.12 might work as |
| well (not tested.) |
| |
| To create an image, create a directory called "isolinux" underneath |
| the root directory of your ISO image master file tree. Copy |
| isolinux.bin, a config file called "isolinux.cfg" (see syslinux.doc |
| for details on the configuration file), and all necessary files |
| (kernels, initrd, display files, etc.) into this directory, then use |
| the following command to create your ISO image (add additional options |
| as appropriate, such as -J or -R): |
| |
| mkisofs -o <isoimage> \ |
| -b isolinux/isolinux.bin -c isolinux/boot.cat \ |
| -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table \ |
| <root-of-iso-tree> |
| |
| ISOLINUX resolves pathnames the following way: |
| |
| - A pathname consists of names separated by slashes, Unix-style. |
| - A leading / means it searches from the root directory; otherwise the |
| search is from the isolinux directory (think of this as the "current |
| directory".) |
| - . and .. in pathname searches are not supported. |
| - The maximum length of any pathname is 255 characters. |
| |
| Note that ISOLINUX only uses the "plain" ISO 9660 filenames, i.e. it |
| does not support Rock Ridge or Joliet filenames. It can still be used |
| on a disk which uses Rock Ridge and/or Joliet extensions, of course. |
| Under Linux, you can verify the plain filenames by mounting with the |
| "-o norock,nojoliet" option to the mount command. Note, however, that |
| ISOLINUX does support "long" (level 2) ISO 9660 plain filenames, so if |
| compatibility with short-names-only operating systems like MS-DOS is |
| not an issue, you can use the "-l" or "-iso-level 2" option to mkisofs |
| to generate long (up to 31 characters) plain filenames. |
| |
| ISOLINUX does not support discontiguous files, interleaved mode, or |
| logical block and sector sizes other than 2048. This should normally |
| not be a problem. |
| |
| ISOLINUX is by default built in two versions, one version with extra |
| debugging messages enabled. If you are having problems with ISOLINUX, |
| I would greatly appreciate if you could try out the debugging version |
| (isolinux-debug.bin) and let me know what it reports. |
| |
| |
| ++++ BOOTING DOS (OR OTHER SIMILAR OPERATING SYSTEMS) ++++ |
| |
| WARNING: This feature depends on BIOS functionality which is |
| apparently broken in a very large number of BIOSes. Therefore, this |
| may not work on any particular system. No workaround is possible; if |
| you find that it doesn't work please complain to your vendor and |
| indicate that "BIOS INT 13h AX=4C00h fails." |
| |
| To boot DOS, or other real-mode operating systems (protected-mode |
| operating systems may or may not work correctly), using ISOLINUX, you |
| need to prepare a disk image (usually a floppy image, but a hard disk |
| image can be used on *most* systems) with the relevant operating |
| system. This file should be included on the CD-ROM in the /isolinux |
| directory, and have a .img extension. The ".img" extension does not |
| have to be specified on the command line, but has to be explicitly |
| specified if used in a "kernel" statement in isolinux.cfg. |
| |
| For a floppy image, the size of the image should be exactly one of the |
| following: |
| |
| 1,228,800 bytes - For a 1200K floppy image |
| 1,474,560 bytes - For a 1440K floppy image |
| 2,949,120 bytes - For a 2880K floppy image |
| |
| Any other size is assumed to be a hard disk image. In order to work |
| on as many systems as possible, a hard disk image should have exactly |
| one partition, marked active, that covers the entire size of the disk |
| image file. Even so, hard disk images are not supported on all |
| BIOSes. |
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