[ale] CRISIS -> boot/root floppy needed..........

[Courtney Thomas]

Thank you James for the, as always, excellent help.

I have a kernel on the HD with all needed drivers/modules. All I need is 
the root disk. My boot floppy asks for a root floppy.

The boot floppy allows me to successfully load the mandatory HD driver. 
After bootup, I can insmod the others.

Pardon my ignorance but reading mkbootdisk, mkinitrd, & Co.,....making a 
root disk remains opaque.

HOW do you make a root [NOT boot] floppy ? Is there a URL you are aware 
of that gives detailed instruction ?

I find no one that is able to say, "how you make a root floppy is 
1,2,3.........".

Appreciatively,
Courtney




James P. Kinney III wrote:

> I don't think you will find a redhat root floppy that will support that
> hardware without some tinkering. What you need is an initrd file on a
> boot disk that you can make with the  mkbootdisk command. Check out
> mkinitrd.
> 
> A second option is to compile a kernel with those drivers in it. Then
> theres no need for the initrd other than a blank one that gets
> "pivotrooted" out of the way to run the real /.
> 
> Since RH6.1 is using a 2.2.x kernel, be sure to read the direction in
> man mkinitrd about 2.2 limitations on filesystems and initrd and
> pivotroot.
> 
> It might be a good thing to upgrade to a more current mkbootdisk as the
> new stuff can do some serious foomagic including the mkinitrd stuff.
> 
> On Mon, 2003-03-03 at 08:27, Courtney Thomas wrote:
> 
>>Good Morning !
>>
>>I am running RH6.1 because of an Oracle installation and need to leave 
>>it alone for now, however, any guidance regarding SPECIFICS of upgrading 
>>the OS and Oracle would be appreciated.
>>
>>Setup:
>>	bootup uses dpt_i2o		<- OS hard drive scsi driver
>>	oracle uses eata		<- scsi raid driver for oracle
>>	tape drive uses dc390x_ncr	<- scsi tape driver
>>
>>Dilemma:
>>	no boot/root floppy, other than a custom one, is going to have the 
>>dpt_i2o & dc390x_ncr drivers, since they are non-standard scsi drivers. 
>>So, the boot floppy must afford the opportunity to install dpt_i2o at 
>>bootup, which is done by mkbootdisk under RH6.1.
>>
>>And, once the OS hard drive is up, the eata & dc390x_ncr modules must be 
>>installed before unmounting the OS hard drive, to provide quiescent OS 
>>and raid hard drives for tape backup. This assumes, of course, these 
>>modules would remain available after OS hard drive unmounting.
>>
>>But, the aforedescribed boot floppy asks for a root floppy, which is not 
>>provided AFAIK by RH6.1. I have more pressing needs than spending 
>>unknown hours whittling away on such a root floppy.
>>
>>Is there a 'downloadable' root floppy that can meet these requirements ?
>>
>>If not, please precisely summarize the most efficient way to create said 
>>root floppy.
>>
>>Else, what do you recommend ?
>>
>>Appreciatively,
>>Courtney
>>
>>


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