On Tue, 2009-11-24 at 16:17 -0500, Peter Jones wrote: > On 11/24/2009 04:07 PM, Sir Gallantmon wrote: > > > If there are systems that cannot boot to USB, why not offer a boot disc that > > would automatically search for USB drives, offer a list of bootable USB > > drives, and allow the user to select one to boot from? > > Not that I actually believe in these systems that are i686 or newer and won't > boot off of usb-storage devices, but if they were to exist, you wouldn't be > able to do what you're saying on them. > > When the bootloader is running, it can only see devices BIOS provides to it. If > a system can't boot off of a usb-storage device, it's because the BIOS isn't > enumerating it. So it's not a case of "we can start from another device and > then look at the device we meant to be using" - you can't see the device at all, > regardless of your starting point. Mandriva Flash - Mandriva's commercial system-on-a-USB-stick thingy - does exactly what you confidently proclaim to be impossible. It comes with a CD ISO you can burn onto a CD (or mini-CD) that allows you to 'chain-boot' the Flash on systems with crappy BIOSes that can't boot from a USB stick (yes, they exist, but are getting progressively rarer, obviously). I don't know the specifics of how it works - given the above, I presume it goes rather beyond the bootloader stage, or something - but it definitely does exactly what Gallantmon suggested. -- Adam Williamson Fedora QA Community Monkey IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org http://www.happyassassin.net -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
