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Thread: BOOTFROM: What is the point?

  1. #1
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    BOOTFROM: What is the point?

    Note: I am talking about bootfrom - which is supposed to be a way to boot from NTFS (or ReiserFS) - *not* FROMHD, which only works with FAT/FAT32 (or ext2?) Note that FROMHD works fine "out of the box", but the point is it only works with the 'classic" HD filesystems.

    Anyway, my question is: What is the intended use of BOOTFROM?

    To go ahead and try to answer my own question, let me say that I am intrigued by it but I was not able to get it to work. Here's my experience.
    On a new-from-the-factory XP machine, I booted XP and copied the 8/16/04 KNOPPIX....iso file to C:\

    Then, I rebooted and booted a customized Knoppix CD (of the same version) that contains the boot stuff, but not the "big file" (the cloop file). I got to the boot prompt and entered: knoppix 2 bootfrom=/dev/hda1/K*.iso
    It didn't work - it gave me the "screen of death" - cannot find Knoppix file system - dropping you to a very limited shell.

    Now, the reason I am trying to do this at all is because of defective hardware. The CD drives on some older machines cannot boot the regular Knoppix CD because they can't reliably access all the tracks on the CD. I've found that I can boot the "boot only" version on these machines. So, can I use BOOTFROM in any way to get around these hardware limitations?

  2. #2
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    This is how I got bootfrom to work on my Windows NT machine, where the file system is also NTFS.

    1) Using Windows make a directory c:\KNOPPIX (caps important)

    2) copy the CLOOP file from a Knoppix CD that has had the ISO file burnt to it to this directory:

    copy d:\KNOPPIX\KNOPPIX c:\KNOPPIX\KNOPPIX

    (if d is your CD-ROM drive)

    3) Use the CD to boot up but give the following command line:

    knoppix26 bootfrom=/dev/hda1

    This will boot into the 2.6 Kernel. Nothing else would work with Windows NT. Cannot use Kernel 2.4 - Cannot use the ISO - only the CLOOP file. Whether Windows XP is any different I don't know. I progressed to Poor Mans Install to a Windows partition by the time I had XP - which is much better. Don't need a CD to boot up with then!

    Does Bootfrom have a purpose?

    Yes it does. I cannot do a Poor Man's on my NT machine, because it is at work and I do not have write access to the boot.ini file to change it! Using the CD and bootfrom is the only way I have!

    Hope that helps.

    ICPUG

  3. #3
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    Quote Originally Posted by ICPUG
    This is how I got bootfrom to work on my Windows NT machine, where the file system is also NTFS.

    ...

    Does Bootfrom have a purpose?

    Yes it does. I cannot do a Poor Man's on my NT machine, because it is at work and I do not have write access to the boot.ini file to change it! Using the CD and bootfrom is the only way I have!

    ICPUG
    I still don't get it. In your situation, why not just boot the CD and go from there? How does it help to have the CLOOP on the hard disk?

  4. #4
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    Quote Originally Posted by gazelle
    I still don't get it. In your situation, why not just boot the CD and go from there? How does it help to have the CLOOP on the hard disk?
    boot knoppix bootfrom=/dev/hda1 then you can remove the cd, and use the drive for other cds...

  5. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by Doctor
    Quote Originally Posted by gazelle
    I still don't get it. In your situation, why not just boot the CD and go from there? How does it help to have the CLOOP on the hard disk?
    boot knoppix bootfrom=/dev/hda1 then you can remove the cd, and use the drive for other cds...
    OK - but I take it that, to work, the CD itself has to be fully functional - i.e., your CD drive has to be fully functional and that my "defective hardware scenario" described above won't cut it. Essentially, what it is doing is booting the CD (just like a normal, everyday boot) and then booting the CLOOP from the NTFS drive as a sub-boot.

    Does this use the "NTFS (read-only) kernal driver" to mount the NTFS drive? Is that the basic trick?

    Just out of curiosity, why would you want to do this? Why would want to have the CD drive freed up?
    Is there any performance gain? I.e., from when you "fromhd", it boots more quickly because the main file is on the hard disk (doesn't mess with the CD at all). But that's doesn't seem to be the case here.

  6. #6
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    Gazelle,

    There is just as much performance gain with bootfrom as there is with fromhd. After the initial stuff is got from the CD it then boots the main file from the hard drive. Of course, there is perfomance gain during usage as well because things come off the hard drive faster than the CD. You still have the decompression routines to do but that is all.

    It would be nice if you tried your cut down CD to boot a cloop file from the hard drive and see if it works. I appreciate getting the cloop file on the hard drive in the first place may be a bit difficult if the CD will not copy - may need a 1GB Flash drive or external drive ...

    If using bootfrom with the .iso file DOES work with XP I wonder if the original reason for your problem was because the .iso file was in the wrong directory. Stick it in a c:\KNOPPIX directory and use cheatcode bootfrom=/dev/hda1. I did not suggest this before because I wanted to provide information I know works. I am not sure about this.


    Other reasons for freeing the CD drive. It makes a noise when it is revolving!

    Really I don't want to use the CD Drive at all but as I said previously I don't have the access rights to create a Poor Man's Install so I have to boot from the CD. I use bootfrom rather than fromhd because that is all that works (on NT at least).

    ICPUG

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