Re: bootdisk problem

["Marc Mongeon" <Mongeon@bankoe.com>]

> I was booting off the bootdisk and when the initial message and the boot:
> prompt comes up, I hit enter, and it loads the root.bin, prints 4 periods,
> and then hangs, like this:
>
>    loading root.bin....
>
> I tried all the boot images, resc-1440, resc-1440-safe, resc-1440-tecra,
> resc-1440-safetecra, and they all have this problem.

Noble:

I had exactly this problem when trying to install Debian on an older
AST Ascentia laptop.  I had a linux router diskette that booted with
no problem; the most obvious difference I could see was that the linux
router disk used SYSLINUX 1.44, and the Debian install diskette used
SYSLINUX 1.42.  Well, I couldn't think of an easy way to convert the
Debian install diskette to 1.44, so instead I created a boot disk with
LILO and the distribution root.bin.  I used the Bootdisk HOWTO as my
guide.  If you don't have a Linux machine, or the HOWTO doesn't make
any sense, I can send you a copy of the disk image I created.  Other-
wise you can read the description of what I did at the bottom of this
mail.

Hang on to your old rescue floppy, because when you're prompted later
in the install for that diskette, you'll need to use that one, not the
new one with LILO.

All that having been said, I don't really know why the standard Debian
install disks don't work on some laptops.  If anybody else has any
insight into this, I'd appreciate hearing it.

Marc


If you're still interested, read on...

You'll need the resc1440.bin disk image and a file called bdlilo.conf,
which you'll create as follows:

----- begin bdlilo.conf -----
boot      =/dev/fd0
install   =/boot/boot.b
map       =/boot/map
read-write
backup    =/dev/null
compact
image     = /linux
root      =/dev/fd0
----- end bdlilo.conf -----

Then do this:

$ mount -t msdos -o loop resc1440.bin /mnt
$ ls -l /mnt/linux
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root     root       715260 Mar  3  1999 /mnt/linux
$ mke2fs -i 8192 -m 0 /dev/fd0 750
$ mount -t ext2 /dev/fd0 /floppy
$ rm -rf /floppy/lost+found
$ mkdir /floppy/boot
$ mkdir /floppy/dev
$ cp -R /dev/fd0 /floppy/dev
$ cp -R /dev/null /floppy/dev
$ cp /boot/boot.b /floppy/boot
$ cp bdlilo.conf /mnt/linux /floppy/
$ lilo -v -C bdlilo.conf -r /floppy
$ rdev -r /floppy/linux  17134
$ umount /floppy
$ dd if=/mnt/root.bin of=/dev/fd0 bs=1k seek=750

----------
Marc Mongeon <mongeon@bankoe.com>
Unix Specialist
Ban-Koe Systems
9100 W Bloomington Fwy
Bloomington, MN 55431-2200
(612)888-0123, x417 | FAX: (612)888-3344
----------
"It's such a fine line between clever and stupid."
   -- David St. Hubbins and Nigel Tufnel of "Spinal Tap"