Booting from Floppy rather than using bootloader

Zmaster115 · 01-10-2005, 01:56 AM

Pretty simple question, but I'm new to SuSe, and certainly wouldn't call myself a skilled user at Linux.

How can I boot SuSe 9.2 from a floppy disk rather than using a bootloader?

I had seen all of the questionable issues with it corrupting Windows partitions, and didn't feel like chancing it.

Nowhere during the install (I installed from DVD) did it give me the option.
Unless I missed something.

whansard · 01-10-2005, 02:13 AM

edit your lilo config in /etc/lilo.conf to make the boot device /dev/fd0 and install it. it will install lilo on the floppy instead of the hard drive.

or use the command mkrescue to make a rescue floppy.

Zmaster115 · 01-10-2005, 02:50 AM

I was able to use the CD to boot in and create the boot floppy.

Thanks for the help.

gd2shoe · 01-11-2005, 11:18 PM

For future reference:

The easiest way I know to make a boot floppy customized to a SuSE system is to tell YaST to install the boot loader to /dev/fd0 instead of /dev/hda. This is available both durring install and from YaST on the installed system.

Technically, this should install grub stage1 to the boot sector of the floppy disk instead of the hard drive. The stage1 will still need to load stage2 from your /boot partition (though this should be transparent to you, and wouldn't touch your mbr).