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

[James P. Kinney III]

OK. Stick a blank floppy in the drive and

mkfs -t ext2 /dev/fd0

Then mount the  floppy and mkdir a few directories (sbin, bin, etc are
enough) Then put any small, statically linked binaries you need (think
small here, like busybox) on the floppy. synch and umount the floppy.

Mount your boot floppy and enter:

rdev /dev/fd0 /dev/fd0

and the kernel on the floppy will know to look at the floppy device for
the root filesystem.

Tom's Root/Boot is a fabulous tool. It has good docs on how to build
your own. It now has an iso image for CD booting on boxes without a
floppy drive. 

Which I happen to think not having a floppy is a bad idea. I don't care
how much crap I can pack on a CD.

Well, the bootable, compressed, live filesystem on the second Slackware
8.1 CD is pretty sweet.  :)

On Mon, 2003-03-03 at 12:08, Courtney Thomas wrote:
> 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
> >>
> >>
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Ale mailing list
> Ale at ale.org
> http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
-- 
James P. Kinney III          \Changing the mobile computing world/
CEO & Director of Engineering \          one Linux user         /
Local Net Solutions,LLC        \           at a time.          /
770-493-8244                    \.___________________________./
http://www.localnetsolutions.com

GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics) <jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
Fingerprint = 3C9E 6366 54FC A3FE BA4D 0659 6190 ADC3 829C 6CA7 

 This is a digitally signed message part