[BBLISA] MBR that reboots machine

[Paul Beltrani]

Personally, I'd go with the thumb drive solution.  They're cheap in bulk
and it's a simple fix.  However, that doesn't answer your question.

Re rebooting directly from MBR
I can't think of anything that runs completely out of the MBR.  (Perhaps
the original version of GRUB?  It's been too long and I don't recall.)
While GRUB2 looks for configs/menus in a boot partition, it is FOSS and you
may be able to modify it to simply do a system reset.  See
https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/

  -- Paul Beltrani


On Fri, Oct 7, 2016 at 11:46 AM, Alex Aminoff <alex at basespace.net> wrote:

>
> On 10/7/2016 11:02 AM, Dan Ritter wrote:
>
>>
>> Can you install a tiny boot partition containing etherboot/gpxe
>> (http://etherboot.org/wiki/howtos) which will then try to PXE
>> boot indefinitely? It fits on a floppy or tiny USB, too.
>>
>> That would be a backup plan if we can not find something that fits in
> just the MBR. The local HDs already have partitions on them, they could be
> re-partitioned to create space for a small partition as you suggest, but
> that would be a hassle. We have also thought of using a USB stick, but
> those are unreliable and we would have to buy and configure 20-30 USB
> sticks.
>
>
> Can you alter the BIOS config to not boot off local disk?
>>
>
> Unfortunately the BIOS does not re-try booting from the beginning after
> trying all the options in the boot order. It gives you a screen that says
> something like "no OS found, press any key to reboot".
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> bblisa mailing list
> bblisa at bblisa.org
> http://www.bblisa.org/mailman/listinfo/bblisa
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.bblisa.org/pipermail/bblisa/attachments/20161007/2c9c0956/attachment.html>