pmpatrick Posted October 28, 2003 Report Share Posted October 28, 2003 If you check the 9.2 errata, you will notice, among other things, that drakefloppy in mcc won't make a boot floppy. The reason: the present kernel is just too big to fit on a standard floppy. The posted solution is to use "superformat", a utility found in the fdutils package, to increase the capacity of a standard floppy. Unfortunately, there are no instructions on how to do this. Here's what I found with a little tinkering: 1. First install fdutils; 2. Disable supermount with: # supermount -i disable This is necessary because the formating functions won't work with the floppy mounted. 3. Fdutils is a specialized set of programs that allow you to DOS format a floppy in nonstandard ways. In order to do so, it needs to gather some info on how your floppy drive works. To do this run: # floppymeter /dev/fd0 This will take several minutes to run and at the end you will be instructed to enter certain data in the /etc/driveprm file. It will be in the form: Insert the following line to your /etc/driveprm file:drive0: deviation=-3140 The first thing you'll notice is this file doesn't exist. Create a text file in /etc and name it "driveprm" and enter the data from floppymeter in this file. This step is not absolutely necessary but it will speed things up. If you don't, every time you use format with the fdutils, it will do a shortened version of this test and you'll be informed that to speed things up in the future you should enter the data. 4. Now your ready to go. Stick a floppy in your drive and run: $ superformat /dev/fd0u1722 -f followed by: superformat /dev/fd0u1722 Both are necessary. The first command with the "-f" flag was the only way I could get a previously formatted floppy to reformat using superformat. The second command w/o the "-f" flag is the proper way to do it but all I got were I/O errors with it unless I had first run with "-f"; it's necessary because it performs a validation check on the floppy format. 4. If everything went well, you should now have a DOS formated floppy with anapproximate 1.68 MB capacity. to test, you can run the following and get the capacity: $ mdir 5. You can now make the boot floppy in mcc>drakefloppy. The extra capacity is more than enough. Mine worked fine once I figured out how to use superformat but there is a downside to the extra capacity. It reads much slower(about half speed) than a normal floppy. You'll see what I mean when you boot with it. Once it loads, everything is fine. If you want to get back to a normal format on the floppy you can use superformat: $ superformat /dev/fd0 -f $ superformat /dev/fd0 Again, both are necessary. If you want to renable supermount, run: # supermount -i enable Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest GorGor Posted November 17, 2003 Report Share Posted November 17, 2003 pmpatrick If you are still tracking this post, what is the size of your vmlinuz? the reason why I ask is grub can use the pause command to insert a second floppy. yesum that does sound messum but I can but ask. heh heh Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pmpatrick Posted November 20, 2003 Author Report Share Posted November 20, 2003 I don't know from grub; I use lilo. But the whole point of a boot floppy is to provide a way to boot if your boot loader is messed up so I don't know how practical that is. My vmlinuz is 1.3MB by the way. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GR84Deaths Posted January 29, 2004 Report Share Posted January 29, 2004 If you have a *cough, cough* Windows machine. Go to the command prompt and type this in: C:\> d: D:\> cd \dosutlis D:\dosutlis> rawrite Enter disk image source file name: ..\image\cdrom.img Enter target diskette drive: a: Please insert a formatted diskette into a drive A: and press --Enter-- : [Enter] D:\dosutils> you will then have yourself a bootable floppy for Mandrake 9.2. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MandrakeDave Posted February 1, 2004 Report Share Posted February 1, 2004 Hi, Thanks for posting the info, pmpatrick. I have run the floppymeter test and inserted the appropriate line into my /etc/driverpm file, but it still runs the test during the superformat, and tells me I should add the line to my /etc/driverpm file (which I already did). Am I supposed to restart or something (I'm used to Windows :P)? Thanks, Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest jackson321 Posted February 8, 2004 Report Share Posted February 8, 2004 If you check the 9.2 errata, you will notice, among other things, that drakefloppy in mcc won't make a boot floppy. The reason: the present kernel is just too big to fit on a standard floppy. The posted solution is to use "superformat", a utility found in the fdutils package, to increase the capacity of a standard floppy.Unfortunately, there are no instructions on how to do this. Here's what I found with a little tinkering: 1. First install fdutils; 2. Disable supermount with: # supermount -i disable This is necessary because the formating functions won't work with the floppy mounted. 3. Fdutils is a specialized set of programs that allow you to DOS format a floppy in nonstandard ways. In order to do so, it needs to gather some info on how your floppy drive works. To do this run: # floppymeter /dev/fd0 This will take several minutes to run and at the end you will be instructed to enter certain data in the /etc/driveprm file. It will be in the form: Insert the following line to your /etc/driveprm file:drive0: deviation=-3140 The first thing you'll notice is this file doesn't exist. Create a text file in /etc and name it "driveprm" and enter the data from floppymeter in this file. This step is not absolutely necessary but it will speed things up. If you don't, every time you use format with the fdutils, it will do a shortened version of this test and you'll be informed that to speed things up in the future you should enter the data. 4. Now your ready to go. Stick a floppy in your drive and run: $ superformat /dev/fd0u1722 -f followed by: superformat /dev/fd0u1722 Both are necessary. The first command with the "-f" flag was the only way I could get a previously formatted floppy to reformat using superformat. The second command w/o the "-f" flag is the proper way to do it but all I got were I/O errors with it unless I had first run with "-f"; it's necessary because it performs a validation check on the floppy format. 4. If everything went well, you should now have a DOS formated floppy with anapproximate 1.68 MB capacity. to test, you can run the following and get the capacity: $ mdir 5. You can now make the boot floppy in mcc>drakefloppy. The extra capacity is more than enough. Mine worked fine once I figured out how to use superformat but there is a downside to the extra capacity. It reads much slower(about half speed) than a normal floppy. You'll see what I mean when you boot with it. Once it loads, everything is fine. If you want to get back to a normal format on the floppy you can use superformat: $ superformat /dev/fd0 -f $ superformat /dev/fd0 Again, both are necessary. If you want to renable supermount, run: # supermount -i enable Hi, This solution about the bootdisk worked fine on my MDK9.2. Excellent and professional solution !!!!!!! Greetings from Austria jackson Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
finlay Posted March 1, 2004 Report Share Posted March 1, 2004 I've followed this to the letter several times now, but although the floppy is properly formatted and MCC seems to create the boot floppy properly, when I boot with it, it loads boot.img, then v-e-ry slowly (and I mean incredibly slowly) starts loading vmlinuz. It spends several minutes doing this then without warning reboots the PC and starts all over again. I've never yet achieved a proper boot. Finlay Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pmpatrick Posted March 2, 2004 Author Report Share Posted March 2, 2004 It could be a hardware problem with your floppy drive. Try removing and cleaning out the dust. Also, try a different floopy. Or your bios may not like the extended format floppy in which case there's not much you can do. If you have a cd burner, you can make a boot cd that acts like a big floppy by using this procedure: http://www.mandrakeusers.org/index.php?showtopic=11801 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
finlay Posted March 5, 2004 Report Share Posted March 5, 2004 You're right, the bios didn't like the extended floppy. So I tried to make the iso image but failed at the end with the following: root@localhost//test # mkisofs -r -b 288boot.img bootcd.iso /home/fin/test mkisofs: No such file or directory. Invalid node - bootcd.iso Can you help, pmpatrick? Also, is it essential to remove the floppy directory after umounting it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pmpatrick Posted March 11, 2004 Author Report Share Posted March 11, 2004 Thank you for bringing this to my attention. Sorry I didn't get back to you sooner. There's a typo in that line :o . Here's what the command should be: # mkisofs -r -b 288boot.img -o bootcd.iso /home/<user name>/test/ I've corrected the typo and apologise to anyone else that's been inconvenienced by my stupid error Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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