I agree - there is nothing much to beat a CD booted to rescue mode. I have used them many times in various flavors of RedHat 7.1, 7.3, Advanced Server 2.1 and 3, and always succeeded in repairing problems. Usually stupid ones, like figuring out what files to look out for when restoring a server rebuilt for a DR test - specifically files like fstab, network configs, raidtab, modules.conf, lilo.conf and grub.conf, and of course the one guaranteed to be a problem if you try to restore/copy or in any way overwrite it - /lib/i686/libc-xxx.so. Try overwriting libc sometime and watch the fun - it's sure to end up making it into a zero byte file and panic the kernel, and make the system unbootable.
From: Ben Steeves bcs@metacon.ca Reply-To: bcs@metacon.ca,For users of Fedora Core releases fedora-list@redhat.com To: For users of Fedora Core releases fedora-list@redhat.com Subject: Re: Making a spare boot up floppy Date: Sun, 28 Mar 2004 22:03:52 -0400
On Sun, 2004-03-28 at 18:42, Jeff Vian wrote:
The easiest way to make a usable (and bootable) image of a boot floppy is with dd. Use "dd if=/dev/fd0 of=boot.img bs=512 count=2440" to create the file boot.img that is an exact copy of the floppy.
That will create a bootable image of the floppy that then can be put back onto another floppy using rawrite from dos/windows, or dd on linux.
Of course... for rescuing a failed/broken Fedora installation, the CD is actually quite good. It holds a lot more handy software than a boot floppy. I consider floppies to be 'single use' devices... at least for critical uses. After being burned (badly) by some "rescue" disks that couldn't several years back, I have never depended on them again. CDs all the way!
Barry Yu wrote:
I want copy all contents in the bootable floppy into my data storage
partition, and copy them back into a blank floppy in case I need - I had bad experience in open a blend new box of floppy and 3 consecutive floppy even not workable at all! I must prepare if the current boot floppy one day is gone. Moreever, I really want to know above copy process what have I missed that caused the new floppy not bootable even with correct contents in it (At least I can't see what I had missed).
Thanks for helping.
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Homer Sapions wrote:
I agree - there is nothing much to beat a CD booted to rescue mode. I have used them many times in various flavors of RedHat 7.1, 7.3, Advanced Server 2.1 and 3, and always succeeded in repairing problems. Usually stupid ones, like figuring out what files to look out for when restoring a server rebuilt for a DR test - specifically files like fstab, network configs, raidtab, modules.conf, lilo.conf and grub.conf, and of course the one guaranteed to be a problem if you try to restore/copy or in any way overwrite it - /lib/i686/libc-xxx.so. Try overwriting libc sometime and watch the fun - it's sure to end up making it into a zero byte file and panic the kernel, and make the system unbootable.
I agree on the utility of booting from CD. However, the OP had asked what he did wrong in trying to make the bootable floppy. :-)
It never hurts ot answer the question that was asked. :-)
From: Ben Steeves bcs@metacon.ca Reply-To: bcs@metacon.ca,For users of Fedora Core releases fedora-list@redhat.com To: For users of Fedora Core releases fedora-list@redhat.com Subject: Re: Making a spare boot up floppy Date: Sun, 28 Mar 2004 22:03:52 -0400
On Sun, 2004-03-28 at 18:42, Jeff Vian wrote:
The easiest way to make a usable (and bootable) image of a boot floppy is with dd. Use "dd if=/dev/fd0 of=boot.img bs=512 count=2440" to create the file boot.img that is an exact copy of the floppy.
That will create a bootable image of the floppy that then can be put back onto another floppy using rawrite from dos/windows, or dd on
linux.
Of course... for rescuing a failed/broken Fedora installation, the CD is actually quite good. It holds a lot more handy software than a boot floppy. I consider floppies to be 'single use' devices... at least for critical uses. After being burned (badly) by some "rescue" disks that couldn't several years back, I have never depended on them again. CDs all the way!
Barry Yu wrote:
I want copy all contents in the bootable floppy into my data
storage partition, and copy them back into a blank floppy in case I need - I had bad experience in open a blend new box of floppy and 3 consecutive floppy even not workable at all! I must prepare if the current boot floppy one day is gone. Moreever, I really want to know above copy process what have I missed that caused the new floppy not bootable even with correct contents in it (At least I can't see what I had missed).
Thanks for helping.
-- Ben Steeves _ bcs@metacon.ca The ASCII ribbon campaign ( ) ben.steeves@unb.ca against HTML e-mail X GPG ID: 0xB3EBF1D9 http://www.metacon.ca/ascii / \ Yahoo Messenger: ben_steeves
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Jeff Vian wrote:
Homer Sapions wrote:
I agree - there is nothing much to beat a CD booted to rescue mode. I have used them many times in various flavors of RedHat 7.1, 7.3, Advanced Server 2.1 and 3, and always succeeded in repairing problems. Usually stupid ones, like figuring out what files to look out for when restoring a server rebuilt for a DR test - specifically files like fstab, network configs, raidtab, modules.conf, lilo.conf and grub.conf, and of course the one guaranteed to be a problem if you try to restore/copy or in any way overwrite it - /lib/i686/libc-xxx.so. Try overwriting libc sometime and watch the fun - it's sure to end up making it into a zero byte file and panic the kernel, and make the system unbootable.
I agree on the utility of booting from CD. However, the OP had asked what he did wrong in trying to make the bootable floppy. :-)
It never hurts ot answer the question that was asked. :-)
From: Ben Steeves bcs@metacon.ca Reply-To: bcs@metacon.ca,For users of Fedora Core releases fedora-list@redhat.com To: For users of Fedora Core releases fedora-list@redhat.com Subject: Re: Making a spare boot up floppy Date: Sun, 28 Mar 2004 22:03:52 -0400
On Sun, 2004-03-28 at 18:42, Jeff Vian wrote:
The easiest way to make a usable (and bootable) image of a boot
floppy
is with dd. Use "dd if=/dev/fd0 of=boot.img bs=512 count=2440" to create the file boot.img that is an exact copy of the floppy.
That will create a bootable image of the floppy that then can be put back onto another floppy using rawrite from dos/windows, or dd on
linux.
Of course... for rescuing a failed/broken Fedora installation, the CD is actually quite good. It holds a lot more handy software than a boot floppy. I consider floppies to be 'single use' devices... at least for critical uses. After being burned (badly) by some "rescue" disks that couldn't several years back, I have never depended on them again. CDs all the way!
Barry Yu wrote:
I want copy all contents in the bootable floppy into my data
storage partition, and copy them back into a blank floppy in case I need - I had bad experience in open a blend new box of floppy and 3 consecutive floppy even not workable at all! I must prepare if the current boot floppy one day is gone. Moreever, I really want to know above copy process what have I missed that caused the new floppy not bootable even with correct contents in it (At least I can't see what I had missed).
Thanks for helping.
-- Ben Steeves _ bcs@metacon.ca The ASCII ribbon campaign ( ) ben.steeves@unb.ca against HTML e-mail X GPG ID: 0xB3EBF1D9 http://www.metacon.ca/ascii / \ Yahoo Messenger: ben_steeves
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Exactly, what I wanted to know is ; Why I can't copy the contents of a bootable floppy? Because after I have copeid I copared both floppies (The original and the new copy) I obviously found nothing wrong but the new floppy just won't work, that is what I want to find out.
Barry Yu wrote:
Jeff Vian wrote:
I agree on the utility of booting from CD. However, the OP had asked what he did wrong in trying to make the bootable floppy. :-)
It never hurts ot answer the question that was asked. :-)
On Sun, 2004-03-28 at 18:42, Jeff Vian wrote:
The easiest way to make a usable (and bootable) image of a boot
floppy
is with dd. Use "dd if=/dev/fd0 of=boot.img bs=512 count=2440" to create the
file
boot.img that is an exact copy of the floppy.
That will create a bootable image of the floppy that then can be put back onto another floppy using rawrite from dos/windows, or dd on
linux.
Barry Yu wrote:
I want copy all contents in the bootable floppy into my data
storage partition, and copy them back into a blank floppy in case I need - I had bad experience in open a blend new box of floppy and 3 consecutive floppy even not workable at all! I must prepare if the current boot floppy one day is gone. Moreever, I really want to know above copy process what have I missed that caused the new floppy not bootable even with correct contents in it (At least I can't see what I had missed).
Thanks for helping.
Exactly, what I wanted to know is ; Why I can't copy the contents of a bootable floppy? Because after I have copeid I copared both floppies (The original and the new copy) I obviously found nothing wrong but the new floppy just won't work, that is what I want to find out.
As I said in my first answer, making the floppy bootable is NOT the same as copying files to it. The boot sector must be written to make it bootable. Copying files to/from the floppy does not affect the boot sector of the disk, thus it does not make it bootable by the simple act of copying the needed files to the disk.
Making a floppy with "mkbootdisk" writes the boot sector to make it bootable, as does "sys" in dos/windows. Then my method of creating a duplicate of the bootable diskette once made will recreate the boot sector exactly as written so the copy is also bootable.
Please note, that if a floppy has any bad sectors when formatted it CANNOT be used to read/write an exact image since the image will be the size of the full disk and bad sectors will mean the image is not restored properly.
Jeff Vian wrote:
Barry Yu wrote:
Jeff Vian wrote:
I agree on the utility of booting from CD. However, the OP had asked what he did wrong in trying to make the bootable floppy. :-)
It never hurts ot answer the question that was asked. :-)
On Sun, 2004-03-28 at 18:42, Jeff Vian wrote:
The easiest way to make a usable (and bootable) image of a boot
floppy
is with dd. Use "dd if=/dev/fd0 of=boot.img bs=512 count=2440" to create the
file
boot.img that is an exact copy of the floppy.
That will create a bootable image of the floppy that then can be
put
back onto another floppy using rawrite from dos/windows, or dd
on linux.
Barry Yu wrote:
>I want copy all contents in the bootable floppy into my data
storage partition, and copy them back into a blank floppy in case I need - I had bad experience in open a blend new box of floppy and 3 consecutive floppy even not workable at all! I must prepare if the current boot floppy one day is gone. Moreever, I really want to know above copy process what have I missed that caused the new floppy not bootable even with correct contents in it (At least I can't see what I had missed).
>Thanks for helping.
Exactly, what I wanted to know is ; Why I can't copy the contents of a bootable floppy? Because after I have copeid I copared both floppies (The original and the new copy) I obviously found nothing wrong but the new floppy just won't work, that is what I want to find out.
As I said in my first answer, making the floppy bootable is NOT the same as copying files to it. The boot sector must be written to make it bootable. Copying files to/from the floppy does not affect the boot sector of the disk, thus it does not make it bootable by the simple act of copying the needed files to the disk.
Making a floppy with "mkbootdisk" writes the boot sector to make it bootable, as does "sys" in dos/windows. Then my method of creating a duplicate of the bootable diskette once made will recreate the boot sector exactly as written so the copy is also bootable.
Please note, that if a floppy has any bad sectors when formatted it CANNOT be used to read/write an exact image since the image will be the size of the full disk and bad sectors will mean the image is not restored properly.
Now this time I've really gotten the asnwer that I expected and thanks a lot.