Hullo
I have successfully tested 1440 Kb msdos and (since the linked post) 1440 Kb ext2 floppies for booting the 2.6 kernel using 3 floppies as per link
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=223376
Below is my vain attempt to get 1680 Kb floppies to work. Note that while my normal system is live I seem to have no trouble creating the floppies but on full reboot GRUB has some trouble.
It may be a dead end as it may be my BIOS, it has 2 main options 1.44 and 2.88 for floppy and yep they seem to make no difference.
HERE are my thoughts so far.
Notes on creating ext2 formatted floppies size 1680 Kb For the Grub floppy system for kernel 2.6 series
1) All commands are in su mode
2) Create size on an UN mounted floppy using command
fdformat /dev/fd0u1680
3) Put on fs using command
mke2fs /dev/fd0u1680
4) Mount floppy for copying files with command
mount -t ext2 /dev/fd0u1680 /mnt/floppy
5) I made 3 floppies -floppy 2 has vmlinuz and floppy 3 has initrd.gz on each. Due to my success with the 1440 Kb way, I don't think its necessary to do anything to these 2 mbr's.
6) Floppy 1 needs the following files and structure
/boot/grub
/boot/grub/stage 1
/boot/grub/stage 2
/boot/grub/menu.lst (see instruction 7)
7) Open a text editor and create a file to be saved as /mnt/floppy/boot/grub/menu.lst
(contents are
device (fd0) /dev/fd0u1680
title floppy
root (fd0)
pause "insert floppy 2 then press enter"
kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/hda1 ro
pause "insert floppy 3 then press enter"
initrd /initrd.gz
Note that you may need to change the hda1 to whatever your /etc/fstab says it should be.
8) For floppy 1 that is mounted all commands are in su mode assume press enter at end of each line
1) type grub
2) type device (fd0) /dev/fd0u1680
3) type root (fd0)
4) type setup (fd0)
The output is a success but when floppy is unmounted and rebooted grub hangs. I suspect either my BIOS or my device map is wrong.
Notice that the "1680" works on a booted linux system. Its the unbooted one that I am having trouble with.
9) Another attempt was to use a successful ext2 1440 Kb floppy 1 with an amended menu.lst
Floppy 1 menu.lst became
title floppy
root (fd0)
device (fd0) /dev/fd0u1680
pause "insert floppy 2 then press enter"
kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/hda1 ro
pause "insert floppy 3 then press enter"
initrd /initrd.gz
NOTES Now I know that is wrong as it fails. It may work if I knew the absolute Grub speak for the device 1680 floppy hardware. What I am trying to do is, allow the 1440 Kb floppy load as in the past and then try to tell grub that the next floppy is 1680 Kb. (And same size for floppy 3)
PS I also tried a device.map file on the floppy but as you can suspect I have not got the syntax right on the floppy. The syntax for the DEVICE command has been tested and is good when my curent system is booted from the hd.
