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Mandrake 9.2 Boot Floppy


pmpatrick
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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

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  • 3 weeks later...

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

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  • 2 months later...

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.

 

:cheeky:

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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

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Guest jackson321
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

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  • 3 weeks later...

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

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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

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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?

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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

:oops::oops:

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