General :: Use Kernel To Circumvent Dumb Bios And Get Machine To Boot
Apr 28, 2010
I don't know about you, but I have found the linux kernel to read pretty much any usb drive or sd card, while many bioses, especially, when they are older fail miserably. Now if you got yourself a machine which bios cannot boot from your 16 giga stick, wouldn't it be possible to use linux as kind of a bootstrap, install it on a 1 giga medium, that the bios can boot from and then when the linux kernel is running, give control to the other media that you really want to boot from. This should be doable.
It is basically going from a running kernel and its inird to give control over to another grub or syslinux. Does anybody know if this exists already? Truth is that many bioses are just garbage, old and fail at pretty much all new hardware, so why not use a linux kernel as a crutch, to get away from this old piece of junk? I did similar things already with a software raid, where i had a machine that couldn't boot from a HD that was larger than 150 giga.
I installed a 10 gb HD to put /boot on it and then give control over to some "fancy 21st century technology that can boot from this HUUUGE disks" (as from my dripping from sarcasm voice you can tell that pretty much all BIOSes are a thorn in my side and a P.I.T.A. for me, too often they only do 30% of what I expect them to)
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Jul 1, 2011
I recently obtained a built machine that has an Intel motherboard. The computer had Windows XP on it, but the owner wanted me to format it completely before I started using it. Nbd, I just used a gparted live cd and formatted the 200gb Seagate it came with.
Well now, I think the drive is dead or something, because whatever machine I put it in, it doesn't boot.
So, being out the 200gb drive I was hoping to use, I just threw in a spare drive I had laying around. (This is isn't the point of this thread.)I planned to use the machine as a basic server, so I made a Debian install CD and just let the installer run (completing the appropriate prompts). However, usually towards the end of the installation, the machine completely kills itself. It just randomly shuts off. No message about it, just, "Click!" and the machine's dead. I know the installation doesn't complete, I've used the CD on other machines, and Debian will tell you that it's finished and getting your consent before turning off.
Upon trying to reboot the machine, after a few seconds of POST messages, it kills itself again. And again. What I've figured out is pressing the reset button a few times during boot usually gets to go eventually. I swapped the power supply out, but that didn't make a difference. I've tried different RAM. I swapped out the CMOS battery. Nothing seems to be working.. As of right now, it does not kill itself, but it will turn on and immediately it hangs on a a screen that says Nvidia Vanta VGA BIOS and some other video card info. After it started doing this is when I changed the CMOS battery.
The board is older, an Intel D845BG. The first power supply was 300w, as was the second. I also tried a 250w one with no results. The standby light on the motherboard does go on as soon as it gets power. I tried a different video card, just as a "why not?", and the machine still didn't boot, however that first POST line changed to 3D Prophet II, etc. or the name of the video and it reflected the change in video memory.
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Mar 21, 2011
Why isn't there a simple program like Microsoft Windows' Notepad? One which is format stupid (ASCII only), so I can over-ride hidden html character entities. The other day I found myself wasting hours trying to get the Xephyr to work by cutting and pasting the terminal instructions from the following website into a gnome-terminal session - but each time it would give me the same, small window. I tried copying the text from the browser (using copy and paste) to gedit, but gedit was not showing the hidden character entities from the html code. After all this lost time trying different resolution sizes, I became suspicious that something was interfering with my cutting and pasting between gedit and the CLI terminal. Sure enough when I compared the webpage source code it gave me the clue to the problem.
From the same page - two examples:
Hidden character (notice the '�' or × )
$ Xephyr -ac -screen 1280�786 -br -reset -terminate 2> /dev/null :2 &
NO hidden character (notice the 'x')
$ Xephyr -ac -screen 1280x1024 -br -reset -terminate 2> /dev/null :1 &
[code]....
I even tried cutting and pasting out of the terminal yet somehow it retained the hidden characters. I could not find any preference setting in any of these programs which would allow for either eliminating the hidden characters doing a cut and paste or at least revealing them. I would like to plead to programmers out there for this basic functionality...
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Oct 7, 2010
Can some one dumb down the process of cloning a workstation.I have a working workstation that I want a image of and I have a server to put the imagen then I want to take that image and apply to two other work stations.
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Apr 12, 2010
What is the procedure to stop dual boot up in your BIOS on Linux?
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Apr 4, 2011
I am trying to flash my bios but they only supply an exe or a floppy image. obviosly I am not running windows to run the exe and I dont have a floppy drive. So I have been trying to copy the floppy image to a cd with little success.Size of boot image is 2884 sectors -> genisoimage: Error - boot image 'F1B.IMG' has not an allowable size.The way I understand it thats 4 sectors over the 1.44Mb floppy size? Is there a way I continue anyway? Seeing that I will be putting it on a cd I cant see that the size is going to matter
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Apr 19, 2011
I dual booted my system with Linux Mint on a Windows 7 operating platform. I later thought it would be better to use Ubunta as I am a newbie to the system and there is more help available. I tried to uninstall Linux Mint through Windows but I am not sure I did. I then installed Ubunta from a CD and the whole system crashed. I am now unable to boot beyond the BIOS screen and am using Ubunta CD to access the internet. I would be grateful if you could shed any light on what has happened. Unfortunately I have no separate boot up disc.
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Apr 6, 2011
I installed a Raid 2+0 a couple of days ago with windows 7, and everything was working fine until today. I left my computer for a couple of hours and when i came back all i see is this black screen with a blinking cursor, then i tried everything on the bios but every time i tried to boot it kept stuck there, right after the bios POST.Then i tried changing the SATA ports, that was something that fixed similar problems on my old Mobo, but this is strange because this mobo has 1 week, and the HD's (2x seagate 500gb) have 2 days, so they should be fine.
Then i tried with my ubuntu lucid lynx live cd, it has saved my life many times, it always works flawlessly and i thought i could use it to restore the boot files, but i was very surprised when it failed as well, it pops a message saying something like "invalid user pwsuid "user: unknown"{0}". Tried it many times with no luck, only that same message...Now i managed to boot from a "slitaz" linux dist. thats about 30mb, it has many useful tools.I can see the partitions/HD's on the Gparted and mount applications, but i still i havent managed to mount the raid i had on my Windows 7 install, im a bit scared of losing data, and i dont even know how to do it.Is there any way to fix thisrom the slitaz live cd?Maybe i could mount the Raid and then restore the Boot files from the slitaz live cd? I have a windows image i could use on the Raid, and i could copy the image files to a partition, make it primary, active and bootable...I really dont know, maybe that wont help either because the ubuntu live cd couldnt boot, i really dont know what whats going on and what could be the cause of this... maybe a worm/virus
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Dec 9, 2010
I'm attempting to upgrade the BIOS in an ASUS 1005HA netbook. The netbook runs SuSE 11.3, and no other OS. All the BIOS utilities on from ASUS are Windows or DOS based. ASUS has a utility titled afudos that apparently flashes the programmable ROM. Running afudos using the dosemu utility suggests that one needs to create a DOS boot drive, execute afudos during a reboot with the new ROM image located on the drive.
How does one accomplish said task on a netbook without a floppy disc drive? Do I create a bootable DOS USB flash drive that contains just afudos and the new bios flash rom upgrade? And if so, how does one do this? As a side issue, it looks like all the major motherboard vendors do not support Linux. That is, all the motherboard drivers require Windows or DOS.
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Dec 18, 2009
Is there some workaround by changing grub settings other than rewiring the hard disks or changing in bios..
1. my bios is getting reset (low battery)
2. my hard disks are sata and ide, so the ide one is loaded as hd1 by default, cudn't find any way to change that..
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Feb 9, 2011
I'm trying to boot an SD card on a notebook that does not have BIOS support for booting from the SD slot. Using various how-to's I've figured out how to add additional SD card modules to the initrd.img file on a bootable USB drive such that I can boot Linux installed on the SD card.
However, best I can tell, it loads the kernel and initrd.img from the USB and everything else from the SD card. What I really want is to load the necessary SD modules from the USB and then chainload the SD card such that whatever kernel is on the SD card is loaded instead. Is it possible to chainload to another bootable device after the kernel (with the SD module additions) has already been loaded?
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Feb 13, 2011
I have been running Ubuntu 10.04 under Windows 7 (Is this call WUBI?) without any problems for a while. My other machines only run Ubuntu (9.04 & 10.04). I decided to give it a try to the latest Ubuntu 10.10. After going through the successful installation and then rebooting, I am getting the following error message once I select 'Ubuntu' in the boot up menu right after the BIOS screen: Booting ' Ubuntu 10.10, kernel 2.6.35-25-generic'
[Code]...
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Feb 10, 2011
I am new to kernel development,and I have to compile a kernel with some specific features and then install it on some machines.The problem is that these machines are slow,and hence I want to compile them on a fast desktop once and then install them on the machines.I am following this guide from Ubuntu wiki.
So what I plan to do is, download the source and generate a config file on one of the slow machines, copy both to the faster machine, generate the image on the faster machine and then install it on all the slow machines. The slow machines are almost identical (same cards, processors, OS etc.) but different from the fast machine(different OS and processor). So will this work or not?
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May 31, 2011
I'm just trying to know if is there is a way to run the first version of linux in a virtual machine. Since I am very new to this, my aim is to learn something basic on how the first version of linux kernel was built and worked.
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Mar 31, 2011
how to make virtual machine using xen kernel and nfs.
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Jul 31, 2011
I have a server with Debian on it that I regularly reboot after upgrades. Sometimes (on schedule) fsck will check a disk when the computer is booting. With the exception of sitting in front of the console to observe the fsck, how can I determine the difference between a problematic halt and an fsck (besides waiting out the fsck, hoping it is an fsck)?When I send the computer down to reboot, I will usually have a terminal window open pinging the computer so I know when it has come back up. My first thoughts drifted to fantasizing about hacking fsck to respond to pings with some special magic byte so you could tell via ping that a computer was fsck-ing, but I'm thinking there have got to be easier ways..
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Aug 11, 2010
I am using RHEL 5.4 in VMware. Recently i have made changes in /etc/sysconfig/selinux and made it to be in "enforcing mode". Now when I rebooted my system, It is showing the following error:
"Unable to load SELinux Policy. machine is in enforcing mode.
Kernel panic- not syncing: Attempted to kill init!"
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Jun 17, 2011
I was just thinking about installing an operating system like ubuntu or ubuntu server on an external harddrive. this being possible , i would like to know if we can use the external drive to plug into any machine and run my ubuntu by just changing the needed bios mods in that system. and without further having to install the necessary hardware specific devices into my os.
Because each machine would have its own hardware set, how would the os handle it or would it have to install the necessary drivers and so on everytime it comes across a different system from the immediate previous hardware it was used with. and i know this was why laptops were invented even maybe to have that portability to use with but this without a laptop, just an external hard drive that can make up and help us use the hardware at hand with ease without any installations of any kind.
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Jan 8, 2010
AFAIK, in addition to implementing the standard C library, glibc provides wrappers for system calls, threading support, and basic application facilities. So because of that, glibc that will be used on my target system should be built based on the kernel version running on my target, right?
Based on the above, I am trying to build a glibc version for my target machine's kernel. However, I don't know to to build a glibc library for a target system and also where on the target's filesystem should be put? In which location Linux will start looking for the libraries required for a program to run (should I create an /etc/ld.so.conf file)?
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Aug 29, 2010
I have been trying plop floppy to boot a bootable cdrom from a mobile USB cdrom reader, but the usb cdrom are not recognized.I was thinking that with grub or grub2 or syslinux that would be possible, no ?
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Jul 17, 2010
this is what i did i downloaded the latest stable kernel archive from kernel.org and extracted the archive into the download directory (i don't think that matters though) then i downloaded and installed the ncurses archive (needed for menuconfig) then i opened a terminal and navigated to the directory that was extracted from the archive and issues the floowing commands
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Dec 6, 2010
I'm getting this error whenever executing the top command in Linux remotely via SSH: top: Unknown terminal "dumb" in $TERM
My Java application which monitors the performance of the remote machine uses the output of top command.
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Dec 16, 2010
I have a single 6.2Gb file that needs to go on a fat32 format hdd, does anyone know of a way to split the file so it will fit.
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Oct 14, 2010
I've got two laptops running Ubuntu. Both have had Lucid installed from the live cd. I have upgraded one of them to Maverick. Both distributions are running great after they boot up, but I haven't experienced any faster boot times with either distibution. Both boot to Bios and then the screen goes black with a blinking cursor in upper left corner of the screen. The black screen remains for 30 to 45 seconds and then I get the Ubuntu splash screen for maybe 5 seconds, and then desktop. Why am I not seeing faster boot times? I realize 45 to 60 seconds is good compared to other os's, but I anticipated much faster boot times. Shut down on the other hand is quite fast at maybe 5 to 10 seconds. Does anyone else get this black screen on boot? Seems like wasted time cause I can't tell what's going on during the time there is a black screen. This is not a real big deal breaker, as I don't reboot very often, but I just wonder why bootup isn't faster.
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Sep 17, 2010
I'm moving to Vietnam soon and was wondering if anyone knows of the best native linux way to circumvent the internet censorship there without slowing it down too significantly. I used to use proxy servers to access Wikipedia in China, but they were slow and unreliable. Not to mention, it was a pain to enable/disable it.
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Apr 16, 2010
Well today I decided that I couldn't wait for the offical release of 10.04 LTS, so I upgraded from 9.10 to 10.04 LTS Beta 2. After realizing that many problems had come with that update, I decided to just format my Ubuntu partition and reinstall it. Somehow my GRUB stopped working from when I formatted Ubuntu, so I whipped out the old Toshiba recovery disk for Windows Vista 32bit. After many attempts to have the recovery portion of the disk fix all of my problems and seeing no results, I decided that reinstalling Ubuntu (and GRUB) might make everything all better. Well it didn't. Grub shows my Windows partition but fails to boot it. After selecting it, it goes to a blank screen and stops responding. And to add to all of my problems, my BIOS has changed slightly. It no longer shows/or responds to F2 or F12 when I tried to give another try at that Toshiba recovery disk. That kinda sucks since I can't choose what to boot. Please help me!! I really don't want to have to format my entire hard drive and try to install Windows Vista again (Not that Vista is anything anyone should love) I have many expensive programs that can only be activated a certain amount of times. I don't even think that I could reinstall Vista since my BIOS won't let me boot the CD/DVD drive.
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Jun 3, 2010
Months ago one of my computers died. I have bought a brand new one laptop, but I have a problem at the moment I wanted to install Ubuntu in dual boot with Windows 7: the new partition that windows 7 reserves for securing system files.
There are three partitions: Windows 7 principal, Windows 7 for securing system files (at the drive's beginning) and the recovery partition that HP puts there. Then I only have option to resize the Windows principal partition and get another principal partition. My question is if you know how to deal with this?
The other option you can help me is to advise me about some external hard drives to install ubuntu in them and don't touch the internal disk of my laptop.
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Jul 23, 2010
I want to make my machine to PXE boot windows from another machine having RHEL5.2. I know the procedure to PXE boot linux, but I want to know is it possible to PXE boot your client machine with windows XP.
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Aug 5, 2009
Short storey is my gf's father (as in priest) pc is infected and his webmail account was hacked so he's now sensitive and understands the significance of a scammer running wild with his name. Oh he's running win98.
I've picked up a cheep off-lease dell (P4, 3GHz) and am tossing over the OS. Has anyone tried Quickbooks on wine? Good luck, successfull? No I don't own it, the perish does, and I can't run away with it so flailing out of site isn't an option. Yes I really want to setup a linux box here before settling for Windows so any thoughts or suggestions short of training him to use gnu cash
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Apr 4, 2011
I am currently stationed overseas in Japan, and I am happy to say that I have a 100 Mbit fiber line from my service provider... I am not so happy to say that they force me to use their "CTU", which is basically a Japanese router, which limits me from receiving external connections (such as would be required to host FTP, or administer my home machines via SSH or VNC). I have tried many methods of bypassing this piece of equipment, but so far none have worked (router setup for PPPoE, DHCP, Static IP, so on). I don't think the Japanese would mind me bypassing this device, as it's really there to 'protect' me, but there's such a language barrier that I can't figure out how to tell them what I want to do.
In order to troubleshoot the problem, I would like to setup a spare computer as a hub, dumbly (Is that a word? It is for this circumstance...) passing data from one device to the other, and allowing me to watch what is being passed via Wireshark. I am pretty linux savvy, but I'm completely useless with iptables.
Here is the final product I want:
After connecting eth0 to the fiber modem and eth1 to the CTU, I want the computer to duplicate eth0's distant end MAC to eth1 and vice versa (to simulate the computer not being on the network at all), then I just want the computer to pass any data coming in on eth0 to eth1, and any data coming in on eth1 to eth0. Finally, I need to be able to read the throughput with Wireshark, but I really think that will be very simple if I can get the rest of the setup complete.
One piece of info - there is no dhcp on this link of the network, and I have no way of knowing the MAC addresses of either end before connecting them.
As an added bonus, once I've captured the handshake between the CTU and modem, if someone knows how to retransmit those packets on demand (i.e. to replace the CTU with my computer), I would be quite happy to hear about it.
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