Re: Extending cdboot with options "Press any key to boot from CD" prompt

From: Maxim Sobolev <sobomax_at_portaone.com>
Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2004 21:48:04 +0300
Samuel Clements wrote:

>>>Windows 2000 and later checks for an active partition on HDD first, and
>>>display this message if none found.
>>>
>>>Is it hard to implement?
>>
>>Don't know for sure. Also you can have several hard drives, another
>>CD-ROMs, floppies etc., that set for bootstraping in BIOS after current
>>CD-ROM, so that I doubt that such detection is a good idea and worth
>>efforts.
>>
> 
> 
> Actually, I believe it checks to see if there is an active partition, then
> displays the message. Once the timeout occurs, it tries to boot off of the
> found active partition - independent of what is set as the next boot device
> in the BIOS. Of course if no active partition is found - no message is
> displayed, and the install CD just starts.

See above. How it would help if CD is unserted into machine with network 
boot or machine which boots using some "unsupported" by detection 
heuristics method (e.g. another CD, floppy, etc)?

IMHO, such prompt is useful for interactive CDs to prevent automatic 
booting when CD is erroneously inserted into headless machines, or when 
installation is complete and machine can be bootstrapped off HDD.

Since it's "for interactive use only", I don't see any problems with 
"Press any key to boot from CD" prompt in all cases, regardless of the 
absence or presence of active partition on HDD. It's assumed that there 
is an operator in front of the machine's console, who can press the key 
when prompted. If there is no such person, there is no point to boot off 
this CD at all in the first place due to its "interactiveness".

-Maxim
Received on Fri Aug 20 2004 - 16:48:15 UTC

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