Dealing with Disks

Floppy Disks

Format a Floppy Disk

Actually, you want to format the disk, then add a file system.

Format the disk with fdformat.
- Example: For a 1.44MB disk, in fd0 (windows A: drive)
  fdformat /dev/fd0H1440
Use mkfs to add a filesystem so you can write to the disk.
- mkfs /dev/fd0
Now you can mount the floppy drive and access the disk.
- mount /mnt/floppy

Create an Emergency Boot Disk

There are two methods to create this disk depending on the kernel type (modular or monolithic). Both are explained below.
An Emergency Boot Disk is different from a Rescue Disk
- An Emergency Boot Disk starts the system using the kernel which is on the system hard drive. It is similar to Lilo.
- A Rescue Disk is used in conjunction with the Emergency Boot Disk and it contains a working kernel image. It is covered in the next section.
- Most systems will use a kernel that supports loadable modules, known as a Modular Kernel. If you compiled the kernel not to use modules, maybe a firewall or similar device, then use the monolithic section that follows.

Standard System Emergency Boot Disk
- run mkbootdisk (optionally you can point to a different device ete, but /dev/fd0 is default)
Monolithic Kernel Boot Disk
1. format a disk with fdformat /dev/fd0H1440
2. copy the link of the boot image to the raw device with
  cp /boot/vmlinuz /dev/fd0H1440 (answering y to override "/dev/fd0H1440")
3. confirm the root device (where the root file system is located)
  rdev
4. set the floppy to use the device as indicated with rdev
  rdev /dev/fd0H1440 /dev/hda6 (or whatever from step 3)
5. force the root file system to initially be mounted as read-only
  rdev -R /dev/fdH1440 1

You should try booting with the newly created disk, or wait till you really really need it, then test :)

Creating a Rescue Disk

locate the rescue.img disk image off the install CD-ROM. You may want to copy it to your hard drive, but this is optional.
cd to the directory with the image
dd if=rescue.img of=dev/fd0 bs=72k (you may not need to set the block size)
to test (or use) boot with the Emergency Boot Disk (above) and type "rescue" at the prompt.
You will be prompted for the Rescue Disk.

Create a Data DVD

gather the files into an ISO9660 image file:
mkisofs -R -o /path/to/cdimagefile.raw <path to file1> <path to file2>
You may want to use -r instead of -R, see the man page for details.
copy the image to a DVD:
cdrecord /data/temp/cdimage.raw