Novell LINUX ENTERPRISE SERVER 10 SP2 - INSTALLATION AND ADMINISTRATION Installation Manual page 935

Booting from a Floppy Disk
Create a boot floppy and boot from floppy disk instead of CD or DVD.
Using an External Boot Device
If it is supported by the machine's BIOS and the installation kernel, boot for instal-
lation from external CD or DVD drives.
Network Boot via PXE
If a machines lacks a CD or DVD drive, but provides a working ethernet connection,
perform a completely network-based installation. See Section 4.1.3, "Remote In-
stallation via VNC—PXE Boot and Wake on LAN" (page 51) and Section 4.1.6,
"Remote Installation via SSH—PXE Boot and Wake on LAN" (page 55) for details.
Booting from a Floppy Disk (SYSLINUX)
On some older computers, there is no bootable CD-ROM drive available, but a floppy
disk drive. To install on such a system, create boot disks and boot your system with
them.
The boot disks include the loader SYSLINUX and the program linuxrc. SYSLINUX
enables the selection of a kernel during the boot procedure and the specification of any
parameters needed for the hardware used. The program linuxrc supports the loading of
kernel modules for your hardware and subsequently starts the installation.
When booting from a boot disk, the boot procedure is initiated by the boot loader
SYSLINUX (package syslinux). When the system is booted, SYSLINUX runs a
minimum hardware detection that mainly consists of the following steps:
1. The program checks if the BIOS provides VESA 2.0–compliant framebuffer support
and boots the kernel accordingly.
2. The monitor data (DDC info) is read.
3. The first block of the first hard disk (MBR) is read to map BIOS IDs to Linux device
names during the boot loader configuration. The program attempts to read the block
by means of the the lba32 functions of the BIOS to determine if the BIOS supports
these functions.
If you keep Shift pressed when SYSLINUX starts, all these steps are skipped. For
troubleshooting purposes, insert the line
Common Problems and Their Solutions 917