Baslinux mailing list

[sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>]

On Sun, 30 Jul 2006 3aoo-cvfd AT dea.spamcon.org wrote:

> sindi keesan wrote:
> > mount /dev/fd0 /fd
> > mke2fs /fd
>
> That's wrong.  You format the floppy, then mount it.
A typo, I did what you said.

> mke2fs -m0 -i8192  /dev/fd0
> mount /dev/fd0  /fd
>
> > mkdir /boot
>
> No need to put a boot directory on the floppy.

> > cp /boot/boot.b /fd/boot
>
> cp /boot/boot.b  /fd
> cp /boot/map  /fd

I did not copy /boot/map and it seems to have worked anyway.

> > mkdir /etc
> > e3pi lilo.conf
> >
> > boot=/dev/fd0

> install=/fd/boot.b
> map=/fd/map
I had neither of these lines and it seems to have worked.  (I made the 
mistake of not unmounting /fd before dialing in).

What I had to do to make a lilo boot diskette was:

1.  Boot with the 2-floppy lilo.  (Turns out there was not really a need 
for this).
2.  Mount /dev/hdb2 (BL3 partition) on /hd
3.  mkdir /hd/boot

4.  cp /boot/boot.b /hd/boot/boot.b  (and copy kernel image there too)
and cp /sbin/lilo /hd/sbin/lilo
5.  Insmod the three modules for the CD-ROM drive by cd'ing to their 
directory in ext2 (they are not found on the 2-floppy linux) and insmod 
./cdrom.o etc., then mount the Slackware 4.0 CD, copy lilo.tgz, tar -zxvf 
it, and copy over /boot/chain.b to /hd/boot (BL3 partition).
It would have been simply to boot to BL3 ext2 and install lilo.tgz or copy 
over lilo and chain.b and boot.b

What I think I actually did was copy chain.b to /fd/chain.b, but lilo 
found it and copied it to /boot on the ext2 partition.  I tried once 
without chain.b and it complained about not finding it.

6.  Copy lilo.conf to /hd/etc/lilo.conf


7.  Chroot to /dev/hdb2 (so as not to be running linux in ramdisk, which 
prevented lilo from working).

8.  lilo -v

This appears to have set up a lilo boot disk for DOS and BL3 and BL2.  It 
also put a 'map' file into /boot on BL3 ext2.

So my two problems were:  trying to run lilo from ramdisk (I had to chroot 
to ext2 linux - will loop linux also work?), and not having chain.b.

How does the 2-floppy linux manage to install itself from ramdisk to MBR 
on hda?

I am still very confused.  And I need to test the disk.

The backup for the floppy disk boot sector went into the /boot partition 
in BL3 ext2, so I may have not done this quite right.  So did map  - does 
it belong on the boot diskette instead?  I may try copying them over.


The floppy drive on my other computer no longer reads FAT floppy disks but 
does read linux-formatted ones (mke2fs).  Is this a bad controller or a 
bad drive?  We replaced 6 bad caps on this board, it arrived dead. 
600MHz.

Sindi