[Clfs-dev] the future of -- Chapter 12. Making the CLFS System Bootable ??

[db m]

Greetings,

I'm just floating this for comment/consideration....ie; I don't think 
it's fodder for the upcoming CLFS - 1.1.0 release...


It has occurred to me for some time, that this section on making
the new system bootable, is slowly being relegate in time, if for
no other reason that the actual floppy-drive hardware being
surely deprecated and made redundant...ie; this (and many other)
new motherboard(s) don't even have an FDC incorporate at all.

The option of creating a boot floppy will, quite obviously, still be
valid for many of folks out there reading the xLFS books, but 
equally more and more people will be attempting these books
and procedures with no floppy drive unit at all...

So....presently (in CBLFS) we have this whole passage ;

----

Your shiny new CLFS system is almost complete. One of the last
  things to do is to ensure that the system can be properly booted. The
  instructions below apply only to computers of IA-32 architecture,
  meaning mainstream PCs. Information on “boot loading” for
  other architectures should be available in the usual resource-specific
  locations for those architectures.Boot loading can be a complex area, so a few cautionary words
  are in order. Be familiar with the current boot loader and any other
  operating systems present on the hard drive(s) that need to be bootable.
  Make sure that an emergency boot disk is ready to “rescue”
  the computer if the computer becomes unusable (un-bootable).Earlier, we compiled and installed the GRUB boot loader software
  in preparation for this step. The procedure involves writing some special
  GRUB files to specific locations on the hard drive. We highly recommend
  creating a GRUB boot floppy diskette as a backup. Insert a blank floppy
  diskette and run the following commands:
----

First off the rank, if we're going to say  'apply only to computers of IA-32 architecture,
  meaning mainstream PCs' ,
we might mean  'computers of IA-32/64 architecture, meaning mainstream PCs' that still have a floppy drive'...

Quote - '  Make sure that an emergency boot disk is ready to “rescue”
  the computer if the computer becomes unusable (un-bootable)' .....this is the boot floppy we're about to create? What if one can't do this?....


My current thinking goes like this ;

If you have a floppy drive, then.....(see existing text)...

If your computer doesn't have a floppy drive, then.....(fill_in_the_blanks ;-)


Has anyone given this any thought (yet)? The only (hopefully consistent)
path I can think of, is to include "rescue" or emergency boot capabilities
as part of a CLFS live/boot cd. Then it would be easy to go about the above
fill_in_those_blanks by including text regarding downloading the live-cd
image, and what command (boot args) to issue at the boot_prompt to have
it act as a rescue/emergency boot disk for the newly created system -- for 
that matter, one wouldn't even need to make the new system bootable at 
all right at this juncture - one could indeed test the new system out before 
commiting to a write of MBR.....

Anyhow....it's floated....any thoughts?


Regards,

Don 

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