making a bootdisk in redhat 7.3

[atattoogod]

first off im a noobie in linux, when i was installing redhat i didnt have a floppy handy so i skipped that, and i didnt install the boot loader on the mbr, its on the linux partion. im dual boating xp and redhat.

i found some things on the web about making a boot disk in windows, but instead of a bootdisk it makes the installion disk. this is the dos coomand im using

d: is my redhat 7.3

d:\>cd dosutils

D:\>dosutils>rawrite
Enter disk image source file name: ../images/boot.img
Enter target diskette drive: a:
please insert a formatted diskette into drive A: ans press -ENTER- :

when it is done it goes back to the D:\dosutils>
and i have a installion disk

any info would help, thanks

 

[cleverhandle]

Well, there are lots of ways to make bootdisks. And I'm sure that RH has some spiffy GUI interface for it that I don't know about. But here's the barebones basic version. First, figure out where your kernel is - probably it's at /boot/vmlinuz. Maybe it's just /vmlinuz. If you don't know how to move through directories (cd) and list their contents (ls) at the console, now would be a great time to learn. Put a (preferably) blank, new floppy in the drive. You don't need to mount it or format, just put it in. Then run

dd if=/boot/vmlinuz of=/dev/fd0 bs=8192

replacing /boot/vmlinuz with your kernel location, if it's different. /dev/fd0 should be your floppy device name, but I suppose that could be different as well. That should do it.

 

[atattoogod]

all my machines are running windows. the one im dual booting has the red hat and xp, and when i boot it up it goes straight to windows. i could reformat the red hat partion but i would like to learn how to make one in dos, just for gp

thanks for the info,

 

[cleverhandle]

Ah... so you're not really dual-booting, yet? I see...

I don't think you're going to be able to make a regular boot disk in Windows, but the installation disk might be able to boot to the RH partition in a pinch. Again, I don't know how RH does this, but you'll probably get a line right after boot-up that says "boot:" Instead of just hitting enter or whatever the directions tell you, type "root=/dev/hda2" no quotes. That's assuming your disk drive is the primary master.

Or, easier, just use fdisk to set the active partition to the linux partition, causing the boot process to use the boot loader installed on the partition boot record. Then make a boot disk as described previously.