floppy .img files

[Urza9814]

Just wondering how you make a floppy .img file...I know how to do a CD img or ISO...but not a floppy one...and I'd LIKE it to run when the comp is started...like a boot disc...it can be a windoze on linux prog...doesn't really matter (that's why this is in OT instead of Software)

[Ixthusdan]

I moved it to software because you might not get a serious answer in off topic!! B)

[pmpatrick]

If you have a bootable floppy that you want to make an image of on your hard drive, I think this will work:

 

1. Place the floppy in your drive but don't mount it(note, if you have supermnount enabled, disable it first);

 

2. Run:

 

# dd if=/dev/fd0 of=boot.img bs=10k count=144

 

That will create an image file of the floppy in your home directory called "boot.img".

 

However, you want to be able to boot off this image file which is not possible w/o a lot of trouble. You'd be better off just copying the contents of the floppy to a directory and configuring lilo to make a boot entry using this info. Here's a link where I discussed doing something like that which you might find helpful:

 

http://www.mandrakeusers.org/index.php?sho...=5247&hl=floppy

 

 

 

It's fairly complicated, but if you can follow along with my logic, I think you could adapt it to what you want to do.

[Urza9814]

no...I want something that I can make a bootable img file from data on my hard drive...

[pmpatrick]

That doesn't make a lot of sense. You boot an OS not data and you don't make data per se bootable. Please be clearer on exactly what you want to do. To boot linux you need a boot loader, a kernel image and some config files minimally.

[Urza9814]

here's what I want to do. Take a program I wrote, a DOS console .exe, and put it on a floppy so it'll run when the comp is booted...is that possible?

[pmpatrick]

I think so depending on the size of console.exe but you will have to do it in DOS. You can make a floppy DOS bootable by formatting the floppy within DOS with:

 

format a: /s

 

and then copy your executable, console.exe, on to the floppy if there is room. Then when you boot off the floppy, you simply run "console.exe". Not sure whether that will work as it's been a long time since I ran DOS.