I created a VFAT partition and formatted it. But I can't install correctly
DOS boot sector on it. I can't just boot from the ms-dos floppy or cd and
call a:\sys or a:\format c: /s, because this laptop doesn't have any floppy or
CD drive. But I copied over the network the DOS-floppy boot sector file,
which I had created like
dd if=/dev/fd0 of=bootsec.dos count=1
Unfortunately, this boot sector is unuseful, because it is a FAT12 and when
I write it with dd if=/dev/fd0 of=/dev/hda3, I have a 1.44 Mb partition instead of 3 GB.
Are there any programm to convert and write dos floppy boot sector to the partiotion under linux?
Thanks
Vadim

haha... i tried that a while ago.....

but i did it with KNOPPIX.
knoppix is a bootable linux distro on cd.

i had a 1 gig hard drive, i made the primary partiton 700 megs, and set the boot flag to true, and used dd to write the knoppix ISO directly onto the partiton.

in a sence it worked, the partiton acted exactly like a cd-drive, i couls mount it, i could read it, all the files were there, but it just wouldnt boot !

even thought i t was an exact coppy, i even tried to do the same thing, but write the iso directly onto the disk,,, no partitoning... and again, i could mount it, but not boot.

search and read up on MBR on hard disks, i think it stands for Master? Boot Record.
this is the reason it is not booting.

the basic solution, is to install dos as normal to a partiton, then install grub boot loader to the MBR, and use dual booting with the chainloader command.

Try this:
dd if=/dev/fd0 of=/dev/hda3 bs=512 count=1

Edit: Try copying the DOS bootsector from the hd of another computer (you can copy it to floppy using 'dd')

ok, I found a solution. There is a programm ms-sys available on sourceforge.net,
which writes required dos boot sector.
Everything works.
Thanks and bye.