[K12OSN] HD boot-Format 1722kb floppy on Fedora Core 2

[norbert]

Hi Terrell,

Very cool solution, however most P-Is don't have a CDROM, would blasting 
some old HD with the floppy image and then (ghost) copying on to other 
drives work as well based on the same NIC in place?
AND how small a hard drive can I use ? ...... got lots of 512MB kicking 
around...

thks
norbert

microman at cmosnetworks.com wrote:

> Krsnendu dasa wrote:
>
>> I am trying to set up booting from the hard drive on K12LTSP using 
>> Toms's
>> boot disk. When I run the install on one of my servers (K12LTSP4.01) the
>> floppies don't verify. I heard some floppy drives/ systems just don't 
>> work.
>> So I tried it on another box (K12LTSP 4.1.0) and I get the message 
>> "Device
>> not found" Does anyone have advice how to format 1722kb floppies using
>> Fedora Core 2. This seems to be the sticking point.
>>
>> Perhaps there is another way to do this. If there is a 1.44 MB boot 
>> image
>> that will allow me to format my HD so I can copy the etherboot image 
>> that
>> might be easier. If someone can send an image that I can copy direct 
>> to 1.44
>> floppy that would be fantastic! :-)
>>
>> Other suggestions welcome.
>>
>>
>> Background: I have been using floppies to boot my client computers 
>> but have
>> found them a. unreliable (many floppy disk errors) b. the floppy 
>> drive is
>> used up by the boot floppy because c. if the kids take the floppies 
>> out they
>> lose them.
>>
>> Etherboot BootROM nics are too expensive to get. I already have the hard
>> drives and have no other use for them. I have about 8-9 like this
>>
>> My new terminals have PXE on the motherboard NIC. Much easier:>)
>>
>>  
>>
>
> There is indeed another way to do this (gotta love Free Software!).  I 
> have a couple of 32MB Pentium I terminals here that boot to K12LTSP 
> from the hard disk.  My NICs are 3Com 3C905 and Realtek 8129.  No 
> floppy needed for these babies.  :-)  Basically, you simply cat the 
> EtherBoot floppy to your hard disk.  Here's how I did it.
>
> Make your EtherBoot boot floppy.  Grab something like Damn Small Linux 
> (http://www.damnsmalllinux.org) and burn the ISO image to  a CD-R.  
> Boot your terminal with it.  D.S.L. has actually been shown to allow 
> GUI access in 16MB DRAM on a 486!!  
> (http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/486.html)  Of course, I would recommend 
> no less than 32MB on the clients.
>
> Once you're booted, pop your EtherBoot boot floppy in and do this:
>
>  root at box# cat /dev/fd0 /dev/hda
>
> What this will do is copy the contents of your EtherBoot floppy right 
> to the hard disk, starting from Sector 0,0,1, thus over-writing your 
> MBR and partition table (kiss that Windows 95 installation goodbye!  
> :-D ).  Your computer will from then on boot from the EtherBoot code 
> every time, just like from a really, Really, REALLY fast, HUUUUUGE 
> "boot floppy."  The above command assumes an IDE disk, since that 
> tends to describe most older 486/Pentiums.  For SCSI disks, just 
> replace "/dev/hda" with "/dev/sda"; D.S.L. correctly recognized my 
> Adaptec 2930U, even though there's nothing on it.  Of course all of 
> this assumes that you have only one disk drive of any sort in the box, 
> or if there's also a CD-ROM drive, that the hard disk (if IDE) is the 
> primary master; CD-ROMs should ideally be the secondary master, if 
> present.
>
> HTH,
>
> --TP
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