Howto boot linux from harddisk if that option is not presented by firmware?
 

My system is a settop-box with embedded Linux. It runs on a powerpc-cpu and has an IDE harddisk, upon which I have installed a Debian distribution. I can chroot to that environment, but now I want to boot it directly from the harddisk.

The firmware only offers the following boot options: from flash (which loads the embedded system), from network or from serial-port. Serial-port I use for the console.

Is there a way to load the Linux system directly or indirectly from the harddisk, e.g. by loading a software bootloader via the network-boot and tell this bootloader to load the system (kernel) from harddisk? (I know how to set-up a network boot).
Pls keep in mind that this runs on a powerpc-cpu!

Thanks in advance for your help!

Tmaker

From network may be the most easy. Most systems can be set to offer some small OS or a good OS via pxe server. Many ways to do it also. Booting over http, ftp and things like iscsi and others can be used. Many of the bigger OS's have a boot floppy to then boot to some networked source. That floppy can usually be send over via pxe too.

Your problem is more the hardware and getting a distro to run on it. Embedded is usually some odd stuff.

Some of these embedded also may be running off a CF flashcard.

@Jefro: thanks for your effort but your reply did not solve my issue. My HW does not provide PXE support.
As I stated in my question, I want to load the kernel from harddisk and subsequently mount a harddisk partition as root.
For the time being I "solved" the issue by booting the kernel from flash and mount the harddisk partition via the kernel commandline.
Issue can be closed.

Tmaker