On Sun, Feb 04, 2001 at 09:30:20AM +0000, john gennard wrote: > On Sat, 03 Feb 2001, ktb wrote: > > On Sat, Feb 03, 2001 at 05:33:07PM +0000, john gennard wrote: > > > I've studied recent postings, the relative HOWTO and the Kenel help > > > text documentation and now feel that I understand what I need to do. > > > Unfortunately, I am faced with a problem to which I can find no > > > specific reference. > > > > > > I shall recompile the Kernel (have the tarballs for both 2.2.18 and > > > 2.4.0 -- shall use the former initially). > > > > > > On this machine (the only one above 300 MHz), I always boot from > > > floppies which I make (using 'make bzdisk') when compiling > > > kernels. Booting is very fast after the bios boot - no pause or > > > invitation to add parameters. I'll need to give 'hdd=ide-scsi' after > > > bios boot and can't find how to pause the automatic 'loading .....'. > > > When everything is set up satisfactorily, I would like to add the > > > parameter to the boot floppy - again I've no idea how. I'm proposing > > > to configure the CD-RW in Potato 2.2r0 and the machine is a PC > > > stand-alone with an AMD 500MHz and no real scsi devices. > > > > > > Can someone explain how I can solve my immediate problems. I feel > > > sure I understand the correct kernel configuration requirements - > > > there will be no modules to load. Grateful for help. John. > > > > > > > I'm a little confused here. If you need to boot with lilo why don't you > > just set the machine to boot off the HD with lilo? If you must use a > > boot floppy and need a prompt what I would do is create a boot floppy > > with lilo installed. If you need to know how to do that post back and > > ask. I've never messed with scsi stuff so maybe that is why I'm looking > > at this and feeling dense. > > > kent, > To keep "out of the dog-house" I have had to agree to the > other-half's demand to retain W95 in a small partition of hda and a > little while ago I put FreeBSD on the remainder of that hard drive (I > just wanted to try to see what it is like - am still waiting to do that!). > So, I have a boot loader which offers DOS, FreeBSD and Disk 1 > (My large hdb which holds both Slink and Potato). As I indicated I > always use floppies to boot whichever Debian system I want to use - > this has never let me down, and until I know more I don't want to > risk Win or FreeBSD giving problems. I came to Debian a > computer-illiterate; despite this, in the 15 months or so I've been > running and using it I've never had a crash and I'd like to keep > things so. > > I have two more boxes I use for experimenting - these are Win-free, > so I've tried lilo and understand the basics. Yes, I'd like a boot > floppy with lilo installed, so I would appreciate your help. I'm sure > you realise that I cannot mount the floppies presently in use. >
OK, if I get you right what you want is to be able to use lilo, off a floppy so that you will have a boot prompt in order to pass options to your scsi drive. The rest of the partitions are using a different boot loader. I'm also assuming you don't really need to boot the kernel off the floppy but off your HD will be fine. Basically all you need to do is run lilo off a floppy. In order to do that - 1) Stick a floppy in your "A" drive and - # superformat /dev/fd0 (just to make sure) 2) # cp /etc/lilo.conf /etc/lilo.floppy This is if you have one. If you don't you will have to create one. 3) Modify /etc/lilo.floppy for your current needs. Something like this - boot=/dev/fd0 map=/mnt/floppy/map install=/mnt/floppy/boot.b append="mem=127M" ramdisk=8192 prompt timeout=40 default=deb vga=4 image=/vmlinuz label=linux read-only root=/dev/hda12 4) # mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy 5) # cp /boot/boot.b /mnt/floppy # cp /boot/map /mnt/floppy (works without but it must be there for some reason) # cp /boot/initrd.version /mnt/floppy (if you have one) 6) Install lilo on the floppy - # lilo -C /etc/lilo.floppy If Debian is below the 1024 cut off on a large drive add the line - lba32 in /etc/lilo.floppy or run the following command - # lilo -C /etc/lilo.floppy -L 7) Leave the floppy in and test. That should do it. Of course you will have to tweak lilo.floppy so they work for your drive. You could set it up to boot both slink and potato on the drive in question as well as windows, etc. kent -- I'd really love ta wana help ya Flanders but... Homer Simpson