Creating a boot floppy disk

If the boot loader (GRUB or LILO) or the kernel (vmlinuz-xxxx) or the ramdisk get corrupted, the system boot would be impossible from the hard drive.

Create file syslinux.cfg

TIMEOUT 40
PROMPT 1
DEFAULT linux
APPEND root=/dev/hda1 ro

Create a boot floppy:

mformat a:
mount -t msdos /dev/fd0  /media/floppy
cp /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.15  /media/floppy/linux
cp syslinux.cfg  /media/floppy
umount /media/floppy
syslinux /dev/fd0

Note, ext2 and IDE/ATA support should be compiled into the kernel to be able to mount /dev/hda1 ; the size of the kernel should be less than 1.4 MB to fit on a floppy.

There are two stages of the boot: A) load kernel; B) mount root. If root is corrupted, the boot will fail.

For root recovery, use Linux on floppy or on CD (Ubuntu), (Knoppix)

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