[ale] building a custom boot/rescue floppy fails

[Robert L. Harris]

Ok, I'm trying to make a very custom boot floppy so I can build a home
grown rescue disk for work.  I've got the design laid out as such.
("tmp" is actually ~nomad/tmp, not /tmp)

root.bin
  dd if=/dev/zero of=root.bin.img bs=1000k count=30
  mkfs -t ext3 root.bin.img
  mount -o loop root.bin.img tmp
    put a very basic distro in here, takes up about 1.8 megs (busy box,
      some libs and a couple scripts)
  umount tmp
  gzip -9 root.bin.img

  mounted a pre-existing (working) rescue floppy with fat filesystem on
    tmp
  copy a custom compiled kernel to tmp/linux
  copy root.bin.gz to tmp/root.bin
  rdev -r tmp/linux 30000
  rdev tmp/linux /dev/rd/0
  umount tmp
  dd if=floppy.img /dev/fd0

in the root of the floppy image with the kernel is "syslinux.cfg" which
contains:
# see /usr/doc/syslinux/readme.gz for file format description
DEFAULT linux
APPEND load_ramdisk=1 initrd=root.bin ramdisk=30000 console=/dev/ttyS0 console=/dev/tty0
TIMEOUT 20
DISPLAY greeting.txt
PROMPT 1

greeting.txt contains a couple ctrl-chars for color and a "hi, hang on"
type message.  Also on the floppy is a zero lengþh file "install.cfg"
and a "ldlinux.sys" which has is "data" according to "file ldlinux.sys".
I didn't make the original floppy image and this is my first attempt at
my own.

When I boot off this floppy  I get this:

boot:
loading root.bin....<snip>
loading linux....<snip>
Uncompressing kernel... booting the kernel...

At this point the machine hangs and the capslock and scrolllock keys
start flashing.  No other output or errors.

Any thoughts or suggestions on a good howto?  I need to make this sucker
boot then run 2 scripts pretty much is it.

Robert





 

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Robert L. Harris                     | PGP Key ID: E344DA3B
                                         @ x-hkp://pgp.mit.edu 
DISCLAIMER:
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