Making a boot cd

pilotgi · 08-05-2002, 02:38 PM

I've built two computers and installed Linux on both of them. When I get to the part of the install where it asks if I want to create a boot disk, I always said no because I didn't install a floppy drive.

Is there a way to make a boot disk with a cd?

webtoe · 08-05-2002, 04:51 PM

yes but you need a cd burner installed and set up. and the bios of the machine that you will be using it on will have to be able to boot from a cd.

From there its merely a matter of using the floppy disk images except on the cd (i think that that should work).

The cd's that you used to install in the first place usually make good rescue disks. My slackware cd was a bloody godsend when i screwed lilo over good and proper. I was able to boot with that, mount the hard drive, edit lilo.conf and then run lilo. Lovely.

Alex

erreterr · 08-05-2002, 06:19 PM

I have just downloaded Redhat Linux 7.3 in ISO format and I want to record it to CDs and still let it bootable. Can anyone help me. I appreciate every help.
Thanks

pilotgi · 08-05-2002, 10:20 PM

Quoted from webtoe

"yes but you need a cd burner installed and set up."

Well, I don't see how you could have a cd burner set up on a new machine before the first install of linux.

Does anyone know how to create a boot cd after Linux is installed?

webtoe · 08-06-2002, 05:03 AM

Quote:

Well, I don't see how you could have a cd burner set up on a new machine before the first install of linux.

Well you just need a way to burn a cd. It doesn't need to be done during the install (you can make one afterwards) and it can be created on a windows or a linux machine other than the one you are installing on.

Anyway, look on google for those instructions. Someone would have done it somewhere and written it in a how-to.

Alex

fatgod · 08-06-2002, 09:57 AM

Read this

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Bootdisk-HOWTO/cd-roms.html

TLDP is a great site

jglen490 · 08-06-2002, 11:05 AM

I seems to me that the prime (though not only) purpose of a boot disk, once the OS is set up, is to provide an emergency means of booting should something go awry. In other words for emergency or rescue purposes. I believe most of the recent distro install CDs all have a "rescue" option already on them. So if your CD drive is recognized as a boot device in your BIOS, then simply use your install CD#1 in "rescue" mode.

pilotgi · 08-06-2002, 01:53 PM

fatgod, you're link sounded promising when I read:

"The El Torito standard works by making the CD drive appear, through BIOS calls, to be a normal floppy drive."

But then it goes on to say: "First create a file, say "boot.img", which is an exact image of the bootable floppy-disk which you want to boot via the CD-ROM. This must be an 1.44 MB bootable floppy-disk."

Doesn't sound like that will work for me when I don't have a floppy drive.

pilotgi · 08-06-2002, 01:55 PM

I don't remember seeing a "rescue" option on my Mandrake 8.2 cd.

Any other Mandy users know about this?

mrGee · 08-06-2002, 03:45 PM

Hi
well it is there allright, hit F1 during install boot ;
you 'll get a text screen, exact sentence;

To use this cd to repair an already installed system type
rescue followed by <enter>

good luck

pilotgi · 08-06-2002, 05:31 PM

Thanks mrGee