[ale] homemade bootdisk problems

Benjamin Dixon beatle at arches.uga.edu
Thu May 16 20:10:20 EDT 2002



Nah, I dd'ed using seek to move 338 records to the end of the kernel.
Something like:

dd if=root.img of=/dev/fd0u1743 bs=1k seek=338

Previous to that I dd'ed the kernel:

dd if=kernel.img of=/dev/fd0u1743 bs=1k

then:

rdev /dev/fd0u1743 /dev/fd0u1743
rdev -R /dev/fd0u1743 0
rdev -r /dev/fd0u1743 16722

the 16722 comes from 2^14 + 338 which is the number of records dd spit out
for the kernel rounded up.

Then the root image dd as above.

I thought maybe I had missed a step but I've tried it 4 or 5 times now
with no luck. Then I thought it might be a bios issue (the project
involves older 486 hardware) so I tried it on my P3 and it did the same
thing:

"Loading................................................"
<reboot>

If I DON'T put the root image on the disk, the kernel will boot and halt.
So I I must have done something wrong along the way, I just don't know
where to look exactly.

Ben

On 16 May 2002, Calvin Harrigan wrote:

> When you say you dd'ed the root image right behind the kernel, do you
> actually do something like
> 
> dd if=root.img of=/dev/fd0 BS=XX    ?
> 
> if so you are overwriting the kernel you just put there.
> Could you show the sequence of commands that you enter?
> 
> 
> Calvin...
> 
> 
> On Thu, 2002-05-16 at 18:42, Benjamin Dixon wrote:
> > 
> > Hi all,
> > 
> > I'm trying to put together a custom-made bootdisk for an embedded project
> > and have run into trouble. Ultimately I'd like to have the most basic
> > system plus svgalib on a single floppy so I've been messing with
> > superformat to get 1.68 to 1.7Mb out of a 1.44Mb floppy. I went through
> > and followed the instructions in the bootdisk howto and everything went
> > smoothly. I dd'ed the kernel to the disk, then dd'ed the root image right
> > behind it. However when I try to boot from the disk, it says  "Loading"
> > and thne prints periods all the way across the screen and never gets to
> > decompressing the kernel. However I noticed that if I dd the kernel alone,
> > it will boot and eventually halt. I get the same behaviour with 2.2.20 and
> > 2.4.18 so I think its just something wrong with my procedure. Has anyone
> > run into to the "loading.........etc" problem before? What type of error
> > might that indicate? Has anyone used superformatted floppies for bootdisks
> > before? So far as I know, it should work.
> > 
> > Ben
> > 
> > 
> > ---
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> > sent to listmaster at ale dot org.
> > 
> 
> 
> 
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