[Soekris] Installing Debian Linux from a CD

[Bill Maas]

Hi Robin,

there's another complication with the kernel+initrd+rdev approach:
IDE != FDD.. So I doubt whether the comBIOS will load the kernel without
a partition table in sector 0. In fact, I've seen [IBM] harddrives
ceasing to be recognized as such after zeroing out the boot sector.

Still, how hard would it be to install a Debian onto a second disk? As I
understood from your previous messages, the Debian Installer offers
brltty support. Or boot from some live CD.

But to take the problem back to its origin: your claim was that a
_Windows_ (let's keep that clear!) TFTP boot doesn't work for a net5501
with comBIOS V1.33c. And that you don't want to downgrade to 1.33b,
which did work, because there is some claim out there about a comBIOS
upgrade possibly resulting in hardware damage.

All that the Soekris download page states on this issue is that "Please
note: It is not recommended to "downgrade" a BIOS to an older version
than the one a board is supplied with."

So my burning question to this list is: in what way could downgrading
the comBIOS to the lowest version supported by a particular board type
do any damage to the hardware or otherwise? Because I don't see it.

Back with Debian again: in addition to the other image types proposed:
maybe a Debian "businesscard" install image is just what you were
looking for:

http://www.debian.org/CD/netinst/


Bill

On Sat, 2008-11-22 at 00:50 +0100, Robin Kipp wrote:
> Hi Bill,
> that's an interesting idea, hehe... :-) The only problem is this also
> requires a running Linux I could use to copy the kernel onto the CF card
> which I don't have :-(
> Robin
> 
> 
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