How do I backup LILO on a floppy to another?

[arthurking]

Hi,

I have searched and cannot find much info on my query.

I want to backup my boot floppy with LILO on it, to another floppy and the methods I've tried have failed (mind you this was at 2am and I could have typed any kind of gibberish!)

I boot to Linux on (my single IDE drive) via a (LILO)floppy, and boot to WinXP (on my SATA raid) with the floppy out.

 

I tried one method where I did this;

# dd if=/dev/floppy/0 of=/tmp/boot.copy

# dd if =/tmp/boot.copy of=/dev/floppy

 

and another method I found was to do this;

# mkfs.minix -c /dev/fd0 1440

# mount /dev/fd0 /mnt

# /sbin/lilo -C /mnt/lilo.conf

# umount /mnt

 

none of these worked.

The floppy is good. It worked in win and mdk10.

I'm guessing that lilo is written to disk in some low level (raw?) format, as nothing appears to be on the floppy. Hence the 'dd' or mkfs.minix commands.

This query is both for educational (mine) and disaster prevention purposes

 

thanks.

 

[moved from Software by spinynorman]

 

Edit1:

oops! I wasn't too sure where to post, but I assumed Software.........Oh well!

 

Edit2:

Figured out!

 

I had problems formatting the floppy using the "dd" method (there is a format command between the "dd" commands), but success using the 'mkfs.minix' (both these fixes were dated 2000)

So I combined both, finally got the floppy formatted and then the clincher was that I forgot to run 'lilo' afterwards. Kind of important I guess? to write it to floppy and confirm (or otherwise).

The new floppy worked and I'm feeling much safer now!!

Edited June 20, 2004 by arthurking