Contents of /trunk/mkinitrd-magellan/isolinux/isolinux.txt
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Thu Aug 19 09:50:43 2010 UTC (14 years, 1 month ago) by niro
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Thu Aug 19 09:50:43 2010 UTC (14 years, 1 month ago) by niro
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-updated to isolinux-3.86
1 | ISOLINUX |
2 | |
3 | A bootloader for Linux using ISO 9660/El Torito CD-ROMs |
4 | |
5 | Copyright 1994-2008 H. Peter Anvin - All Rights Reserved |
6 | |
7 | This program is provided under the terms of the GNU General Public |
8 | License, version 2 or, at your option, any later version. There is no |
9 | warranty, neither expressed nor implied, to the function of this |
10 | program. Please see the included file COPYING for details. |
11 | |
12 | ---------------------------------------------------------------------- |
13 | |
14 | ISOLINUX is a boot loader for Linux/i386 that operates off ISO 9660/El |
15 | Torito CD-ROMs in "no emulation" mode. This avoids the need to create |
16 | an "emulation disk image" with limited space (for "floppy emulation") |
17 | or compatibility problems (for "hard disk emulation".) |
18 | |
19 | This documentation isn't here yet, but here is enough that you should |
20 | be able to test it out: |
21 | |
22 | Make sure you have a recent enough version of mkisofs. I recommend |
23 | mkisofs 1.13 (distributed with cdrecord 1.9), but 1.12 might work as |
24 | well (not tested.) |
25 | |
26 | To create an image, create a directory called "isolinux" (or, if you |
27 | prefer, "boot/isolinux") underneath the root directory of your ISO |
28 | image master file tree. Copy isolinux.bin, a config file called |
29 | "isolinux.cfg" (see syslinux.txt for details on the configuration |
30 | file), and all necessary files (kernels, initrd, display files, etc.) |
31 | into this directory, then use the following command to create your ISO |
32 | image (add additional options as appropriate, such as -J or -R): |
33 | |
34 | mkisofs -o <isoimage> \ |
35 | -b isolinux/isolinux.bin -c isolinux/boot.cat \ |
36 | -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table \ |
37 | <root-of-iso-tree> |
38 | |
39 | (If you named the directory boot/isolinux that should of course be |
40 | -b boot/isolinux/isolinux.bin -c boot/isolinux/boot.cat.) |
41 | |
42 | ISOLINUX resolves pathnames the following way: |
43 | |
44 | - A pathname consists of names separated by slashes, Unix-style. |
45 | - A leading / means it searches from the root directory; otherwise the |
46 | search is from the isolinux directory (think of this as the "current |
47 | directory".) |
48 | - . and .. in pathname searches are not supported. |
49 | - The maximum length of any pathname is 255 characters. |
50 | |
51 | Note that ISOLINUX only uses the "plain" ISO 9660 filenames, i.e. it |
52 | does not support Rock Ridge or Joliet filenames. It can still be used |
53 | on a disk which uses Rock Ridge and/or Joliet extensions, of course. |
54 | Under Linux, you can verify the plain filenames by mounting with the |
55 | "-o norock,nojoliet" option to the mount command. Note, however, that |
56 | ISOLINUX does support "long" (level 2) ISO 9660 plain filenames, so if |
57 | compatibility with short-names-only operating systems like MS-DOS is |
58 | not an issue, you can use the "-l" or "-iso-level 2" option to mkisofs |
59 | to generate long (up to 31 characters) plain filenames. |
60 | |
61 | ISOLINUX does not support discontiguous files, interleaved mode, or |
62 | logical block and sector sizes other than 2048. This should normally |
63 | not be a problem. |
64 | |
65 | ISOLINUX is by default built in two versions, one version with extra |
66 | debugging messages enabled. If you are having problems with ISOLINUX, |
67 | I would greatly appreciate if you could try out the debugging version |
68 | (isolinux-debug.bin) and let me know what it reports. The debugging |
69 | version does not include hybrid mode support (see below.) |
70 | |
71 | |
72 | ++++ NOTE ON THE CONFIG FILE DIRECTORY ++++ |
73 | |
74 | ISOLINUX will search for the config file directory in the order |
75 | /boot/isolinux, /isolinux, /. The first directory that exists is |
76 | used, even if it contains no files. Therefore, please make sure that |
77 | these directories don't exist if you don't want ISOLINUX to use them. |
78 | |
79 | |
80 | ++++ HYBRID CD-ROM/HARD DISK MODE ++++ |
81 | |
82 | Starting in version 3.72, ISOLINUX supports a "hybrid mode" which can |
83 | be booted from either CD-ROM or from a device which BIOS considers a |
84 | hard disk or ZIP disk, e.g. a USB key or similar. |
85 | |
86 | To enable this mode, the .iso image should be postprocessed with the |
87 | "isohybrid" script from the utils directory: |
88 | |
89 | isohybrid filename.iso |
90 | |
91 | This script creates the necessary additional information to be able to |
92 | boot in hybrid mode. It also pads out the image to an even multiple |
93 | of 1 MB. |
94 | |
95 | This image can then be copied using any raw disk writing tool (on Unix |
96 | systems, typically "dd" or "cat") to a USB disk, or written to a |
97 | CD-ROM using standard CD burning tools. |
98 | |
99 | The ISO 9660 filesystem is encapsulated in a partition (which starts |
100 | at offset zero, which may confuse some systems.) This makes it |
101 | possible for the operating system, once booted, to use the remainder |
102 | of the device for persistent storage by creating a second partition. |
103 | |
104 | |
105 | ++++ BOOTING DOS (OR OTHER SIMILAR OPERATING SYSTEMS) ++++ |
106 | |
107 | WARNING: This feature depends on BIOS functionality which is |
108 | apparently broken in a very large number of BIOSes. Therefore, this |
109 | may not work on any particular system. No workaround is possible; if |
110 | you find that it doesn't work please complain to your vendor and |
111 | indicate that "BIOS INT 13h AX=4C00h fails." |
112 | |
113 | To boot DOS, or other real-mode operating systems (protected-mode |
114 | operating systems may or may not work correctly), using ISOLINUX, you |
115 | need to prepare a disk image (usually a floppy image, but a hard disk |
116 | image can be used on *most* systems) with the relevant operating |
117 | system. This file should be included on the CD-ROM in the /isolinux |
118 | directory, and have a .img extension. The ".img" extension does not |
119 | have to be specified on the command line, but has to be explicitly |
120 | specified if used in a "kernel" statement in isolinux.cfg. |
121 | |
122 | For a floppy image, the size of the image should be exactly one of the |
123 | following: |
124 | |
125 | 1,228,800 bytes - For a 1200K floppy image |
126 | 1,474,560 bytes - For a 1440K floppy image |
127 | 2,949,120 bytes - For a 2880K floppy image |
128 | |
129 | Any other size is assumed to be a hard disk image. In order to work |
130 | on as many systems as possible, a hard disk image should have exactly |
131 | one partition, marked active, that covers the entire size of the disk |
132 | image file. Even so, hard disk images are not supported on all |
133 | BIOSes. |