Making a Boot Disk for Linux

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The first thing that needs to be done before beginning with the installation of Linux is to make a boot disk. The boot disk becomes a necessity especially if the installation ends abruptly in between. In this document I would discuss how to make a boot disk in both Linux and windows system.


Under MS-DOS

Before you make the boot disk, insert the Official Red Hat Linux CD-ROM Disk 1 in your computer.It is assumed that the cdrom drive is labeled as 'D:' . The following commands are used to create the boot disk.

  1. Go the command prompt using 'start menu>run>cmd'.
  1. Now go the cdrom drive , use 'd:'.
  1. Type at the command prompt 'cd dosutils'and press enter.
  1. once your prompt looks like 'd:\dosutils>' type the command 'rawrite'.
  1. The message now displayed will be 'Enter disk image source file name' .
  1. Now type '..\images\boot.img'.
  1. Again you will be prompted with the following message 'Enter target diskette drive'.
  1. Now type 'a:'.
  1. You will now be prompted to enter a formated 'floppy disk'.

Your boot disk is ready for use.


Under Linux

To make a diskette under Linux or any other variant of Linux-Like operating system, you must have permission to write to the device representing the floppy drive (known as /dev/fd0H1440 under Linux). This permission is granted when you log in the system as the super-user root. Once you have logged as root, insert a blank formatted diskette into the diskette drive of your computer without issuing a mount command on it. Now it’s time to mount the Red Hat Linux CD-ROM on Linux and change to the directory containing the desired image file to create the boot disk. Insert a blank formatted diskette into the diskette drive Insert the Red Hat Linux CD Part 1 into the CD-ROM drive.

  1. Go the terminal using 'run' in the run type 'konsole'.
  1. Now mount the cdrom using the command 'mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom'.
  1. go to the image directory in cdrom using 'cd /mnt/cdrom/images/'.
  1. Now type the following command 'dd if=boot.img of=/dev/fd0H1440 bs=1440k'.
  1. The message now displayed will be '1+0 records in 1+0 records out'.
  1. Now type 'cd /'.
  1. umount the cdrom using 'umount /mnt/cdrom'.
  1. label your floppy disk as 'Red Hat Boot Disk'.

Your command prompt/terminal in linux should look like '[root@'computername']', where computername stands for what you have named your linux box.

Your boot disk is ready for use.

Retrieved from "http://wiki.glug-nith.org/index.php/Making_a_Boot_Disk_for_Linux"
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