differences between a boot floppy and a rescue floppy

[Pete Nesbitt]

On December 20, 2004 08:34 pm, shang wrote:
> Hi,
> are there any differences between a boot floppy and a rescue floppy? In
> which situation do I need these?
>
> Thanks
> Shang

Hi,
a boot floppy has a boot loader (grub or lilo) and is used to point to an 
existing kernel image (usually on the hdd). It can be used to boot a system 
that for some reason cannot boot from the hdd mbr. For example, I used to 
have a 486 that ran scsi drives but could not boot them with the (cheap) card 
I had, so i just left a boot floppy in the drive. The boot floppy had lilo 
point to the scsi drive for the os.

A rescue disk will have it's own kernel and support files so it can boot linux 
without using anything from the hard drive. This would be used for example, 
if something happens like a fatal change to a file like inittab on the hard 
drive, preventing it from booting. You can boot with the floppy, possibly 
chroot into the hard drive, and fix whatever is broken.

hope that helps.
-- 
Pete Nesbitt, rhce