ANSWER: Re: Boot disk swiped, how to make one?

["David B. Teague" <dbt@elentari.cs.wcu.edu>]

On Fri, 12 Mar 1999, David B. Teague wrote:

> I installed Slink on my system but had not installed LILO
> to make it bootable directly from the HD. Someone swiped the
> boot disk. 
> 
> Question:  Is it possible, given the contents of the /etc/fstab 
> file and a knowledge of where the  kernel is located 
> (/boot/vmlinuz-2.036) to run LILO from a boot disk -- say
> "Tom's Unix on a floppy" and make the floppy boot the kernel 
> on the hard disk?

The short answer is "yes." The "how" is here:

I asked about making a boot disk. I got one reply from 
Peter Berlau. The suggestion was to copy my kernel to 
the floppy device, run  rdev on /dev/floppy to set the 
root and swap partitions, to set the initial file  system 
to read only, and a few other things. 

This worked, and solves the immediate problem of getting
back into the system. 

The question I really wanted answer to concerned the 
possibility of running LILO from a boot install or other 
linux floppy with the partition having the kernel mounted, 
to write boot tracks to the floppy. The ideas is to make
the floppy boot the kernel on the hard drive. This
boots faster.

This lilo.conf does it:

boot=/dev/fd0
install=/boot/boot.b
map=/boot/map
vga=normal
delay=20
image=/vmlinuz
        root=/dev/hda2
        label=Linux
        read-only

Thanks to Carl Mummert for this, and to Peter Berlau
who gave me an alternate solution.

--David Teague dbt@elentari.cs.wcu.edu
Debian GNU/Linux Because reboots are for kernel and hardware upgrades.