[ale] ReSolved : Old Silicon, New Distros

[John Mills]

ALErs -

Thanks to those who responded. 'sbootmgr' does seem to do exactly what I
needed. Lightweight, simple, and independent of what the CD actually
boots. This might be a good answer to folks who recently dealt with the
issue of no FD bootstrap on other installations.

 - Mills

On Fri, 22 Feb 2008, John Mills wrote:

> I am upgrading a box that won't boot from a CD-ROM (even though the BIOS 
> boot-order claims to include a CD-ROM-first setting). It looks like the 
> viable option is 3.5" FDD.
 
> I'm leaning toward Slackware, but it appears Slack-12.0 doesn't include
> the older 'bare' FD images, but now includes an 'sbootmgr.dsk' that sounds
> like just the thing. If I understand, it's a small first-level bootloader
> that fits easily on a 3.5" FD and can be commanded to then boot the box
> from a CD drive.

>  2. Has anyone used 'sbootmgr', and have I understood what it's intended
> to do?
 
>  3. Is 'sbootmgr' Slackware specific, or could it be used to jump-start 
> installation of other current distros when one can't boot directly from a 
> CD (or DVD)?