Booting Linux from an internal IDE Zip disk?

[ME]

On Wed, 19 Dec 2001, Richard Gordon wrote:
> 9. All that said, I would still like to get the Zip disk to boot
> without a floppy. Does anyone out there have a BIOS with support for
> booting a Zip drive? If so, can you tell me who makes the BIOS and
> what motherboard came with that BIOS (and even who made the
> computers.) Oh yes, and if you have tested it, does it work?

Guess what I did today?

Installed Windows 98 on a machine to format and sys a zip disk, then
copied some DOS utils/apps, then copy LOADLIN.EXE an a simple batch
program, then copied a compiled Linux kernel for use with LOADLIN.EXE, and
created a small Debian tree (85Mb) and cp -aR the files over NFS to a
loopback based ext style Lin UX image on another system (because the 85Mb
install of Debian 2.2 did not have kernel support for the zip, and I was
too lazy to compile yet another kernel for the Debian install disk) with a
90 Mb image file, and then configured a Dell OptiPlex 300 to recognize the
ATAPI ZIP drive as a bootable device, added it to the list of bootable
devices in the BIOS, increased its priority to be first (Zip is secondary
slave on this machine ) disconnected the HD just to be certain, and I was
able to get the The Zip disk to boot with DOS, then run LOADLIN for the
kernel, and have it reference the root.bin image.

The kernel started up just fine from the Zip disk I booted from, but got a
kernel panic when trying to mount / (prob because I forgot to include
initrd and full ramdisk support as part of the kernel loaded with loadlin.
I suspect I could get the whole thing working given an hour or so and a
fresh new kernel.)

This could make a good 1 unit senior project. ;-)

All of the above testing and sampling prove to me that it is possible to
boot from a Zip Disk without using a floppy or CDROM if the BIOS supports
it directly as a bootable device.

Another solution might be to not use a loopback/image but instead use
umsdos and allow for the Zip to remain a vfat/fat system. This has the bad
effect of being inefficient for the many small files that would be better
handled by ext2, ext3 or reiserfs. (Not to mention the overhead of the
extra ownership bits/security that would be fabricated/read for all file
IO over vfat on-the-fly. :-/ )

To get LILO to recognize the device as a boot device when the BIOS does not
would probably take more work, assuming it is possible. (did not spend
much time on this path.)

Instead of Windows 98, it could probably use freedos, or another non MS
alternative to be more open/free.

I can show you what I have if you want, but it is only tested for this
model Dell.

It has risks:
Allowing people to boot from arbitrary media leaves you at risk for
 viruses (esp bootsector) to all writable drives on the machine.
+All other risks mentioned up 'till now

-ME

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