Re: Undersanding bootable media
Marlon Urias:
> > In my quest to understand booting/LILO/MBR's I've come a cross
> > a phenomenon I dont understand. Friend of mine (linux guru-ish)
> > said that to make a linux bootable floppy you had to use a lowlevel
> > tool like dd as opposed to just copying the files over to the floppy.
Yes.
> > But dos floppies boot just fine by making copies of other dos boot disks.
That's because every DOS floppy has a valid boot sector on it. Try looking
at the first sector of a DOS floppy (umount /dev/fd0; less -f /dev/fd0).
Daniel J. Brosemer:
...
> (I'm not real clear on whether floppies have an MBR or just Hard Disks
> do).
No, they don't - they just have a Boot Sector.
Hard disks have a Boot sector in each partition, so there's a Master Boot
Record at the start that decides which of the partitions will be booted.
BTW, if you want to play with boot sectors, be aware that DOS in its
infinite wisdom keeps drive geometry there. Even when there's a perfectly
good partition table nearby, it still takes the data from the Boot sector.
> Short answer: There are non-files which are important and I would guess
> that you are using a lowlevel tool in DOS without knowing it.
No, it's because all DOS-formatted floppies already have a boot sector.
> Your friend is correct when he says you must use a lowlevel tool.
Yup. The DOS boot sector doesn't work for linux.
HTH
Jiri
--
<jiri@baum.com.au>
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