According to PAUL TRACESKI: While burning my CPU.
>
> I am running Redhat 5.1, booting off a floppy disk created in
> the installation process. It turns out this is the only copy I have.
> When it started squealing I set about making replacements, and
> I have been frustrated at every turn all morning. I am giving up
> and am asking for help. To begin, I have only the most rudimentary
> knowledge, so assume nothing in providing suggestions.
I will try to be gentle..
>
> The boot floppy gets me to user login automatically, and I exit
> with /sbin/shutdown -r now from root.
If your boot floppy gets you to the point of "login" whats the problem, ??.
>
> 1.I can make another boot disk by going through the installation
> process again, but that would wipe out all the customization I so
> laboriously accomplished with a lot of help, stuff I could never
> recreate on my own at this stage, so this is not an option.
I belive Redhat has something like 'mkbootdisk'.
>
> 2. Referring to Running Linux, I downloaded rawrite2.exe from
> sunsite.unc.edu, intending to use it to copy the sole boot disk, but
> it failed to read drive a: indicating a corrupted disk beyond the squealing
> heard during linux boot up. Trying any other disk said permission
> denied, so even if I could read the corrupted floppy, I can't get this
> program to work anyhow.
rawrite(2).exe is a dos program, one which one would use to copy a linux
boot image onto a floppy when one is using a DOS system.
>
> 3.Refering to Linux Undercover page 128, I could not get the
> command rdev to work at all, saying command not found. I did
If you get command not found then the chances are you dont have that command
on your system.
rdev is located in /sbin
If you have it then typing, 'rdev --help' will do wonders.
'man rdev' will confuse you even more, # Thats my humor again. {sorry}.
> find the kernel (?) at /boot/vmlinuz-2.0.34-0.6. I copied the kernel(?)
> cp /boot/vmlinuz-2.0.34-0.6 /dev/fd0
> This seemed to work, after asking if I wanted to overwrite the floppy.
It would have been better to use "cat /boot/vmlinuz-2.0.34-0.6 /dev/fd0"
Or as many say, "dd if=/boot/vmlinuz-2.0.34-0.6 of=/dev/fd0" and possably
some may argue, you need to add options for size of=, i dont..
> I had not done any kind of mount for the a: drive floppy. I then tried
> to boot from this disk. It seemed to be working, but came up with the
> following two lines and hung up.
You dont need to "mount" the floppy when using "cat" or "dd".
> VHS:cannot open root device 08:21
> Kernel panic:VHS:unable to mount root from 08:21
>
> I am at my wits end after struggling for most of the past day.. If I cannot
> copy or recreate another boot floppy before the solitary wounded dove
> boot floppy hits the dirt, I will lose all work done in this current installation.
You could of course read some documentation about installing LILO on a
floppy, or things like "make zdisk".
>
> Paul Traceski
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> P.S. Thanks for the SED command suggestions, they helped.
>
>
--
Regards Richard.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
