SysRescueCD v3.1.2

So to kick off, we'll start with booting SysRescueCD from http://www.sysresccd.org/.

From Wikipedia:
SystemRescueCd is an operating system for the x86 computer platform, though the primary purpose of SystemRescueCD is to repair unbootable or otherwise damaged computer systems after a system crash. SystemRescueCD is not intended to be used as a permanent operating system. It runs from a Live CD or a USB flash drive. It was designed by a team led by François Dupoux, and is based on the Gentoo Linux distribution.

For this activity, I used the download versioned v3.1.2 which I got from http://goo.gl/F36zV 

My issue was that the machine I was trying to boot from didn't seem to have enough memory to use the memdisk/iso boot option common for most installs, which meant I had to try and boot the ISOLINUX image.

The Software:
Open the ISO in your favorite ISO opening tool (I use 7zip).  
Extract the following files into your web boot server.  I used a sub-directory called SysRescueCD

• sysrcd.dat
• sysrcd.md5
• ISOLINUX/rescue32 (or 64)
• ISOLINUX/initram.igz

Note,  I assume rescue64 is the 64 bit version of the kernel, and rescue32 is the 32bit kernel.  There is also altkrn32 and altkrn64 which are referenced in ISOLINUX as alternative kernel builds.  They all seem to work.


The Webserver Config:
This is the menu display section of the config:
item SysRescueCD32 SysRescueCD - 32bit

And this is the execution program required to boot it.

############ SYSRESCUECD ############
:SysRescueCD32
echo Starting Sys RescueCD (32bit) with default options
initrd http://boot.server/SysRescueCD/initram.igz
chain http://boot.server/SysRescueCD/rescue32 cdroot docache dodhcp setkmap=uk netboot=http://boot.server/SysRescueCD/sysrcd.dat
boot || goto failed
goto start

Note, you can change setkmap= to your preferred keyboard mapping; I'm in the UK so that is the one I use.  If you leave this option unset,  it will prompt you when you boot the server.
If you change rescue32 to rescue64 or one of the alternate kernel images,  the same commands seem to work.  There doesn't seem to be any difference in using netboot= or boothttp= to locate the main disk image.

Finally, I'm using a Thecus NAS as my boot webserver,  using FaJo's Apache Webserver module.  For some reason,  whilst the initrd and kernel load perfectly well,  the image refused to boot, freezing at 'null' in the download.  Another Apache webserver didn't exhibit the same condition, but its something to be aware of.  If I find the cause,  I'll update this post.