Help! Feel like an idiot...

[BubbaCola]

I installed Knoppix to the Hard Drive and made a boot floppy - but floppies being what they are died on me. I used Ghost to keep a back-up copy but without a boot floppy I could not get into the system. Tried using bootfrom and ended up only in a small shell. What is the exact language to use to boot from a 3.6 CD-ROM and also where is the exact location to make a boot floppy at in 3.6. I needed to run knoppix-installer several times before I found a spare floppy that was in good shape.

thanks

[BubbaCola]

found out the answer myself after pulling my hair out all day. Thought I would try a slackware boot cd and see if it would work - sure enough I got into the system. So I then tried the Knoppix CD using the same language and wonderful! In the system! Exact language:

knoppix root=/dev/hda5 noinitrd ro

Hope this helps someone else - GOODBYE floppies!!

[baldyeti]

Well done, Bubba - I don't think an idiot would have figured this out on his own! Ideally you should boot this way from the original CD you used to install to HD. This will ensure you're booting with the same kernel version, and that the HD startup sequence will be able to load modules from the HD, which would not match another kernel as found on a later knoppix release.

[kansas]

Glad you got this figured out. As a long-time Slacker I have used this trick for years. I posted it to this list quite a while ago, but it is no doubt buried somewhere in the bowels of this archive, never to be seen again. One point -- This only works with LILO, not with GRUB, which is one of the many reasons I prefer LILO. As more distributions start using GRUB (Why?? Kanotix, Mepis -- are you listening? Is it only for the prettier splash screens?) this trick becomes less and less useful.

As baldyeti already said, it works best to use the CD you used for the HD install.

[baldyeti]

Sorry but I'd have to disagree with you, kansas. The very reasons most live CD's are switching to grub is because it is arguably more flexible than lilo/isolinux as a rescue CD boot manager. With grub, you can boot with the CD kernel and adjust its arguments similarly to what the OP discovered (use the "e" key).

But you can also point it to your HD install, and then boot from your real kernel, even if the CD has another version. Of course you need to exit the grub menu and learn how to use its CLI to achieve this, but it can be real handy. Actually, you can do from the command line whatever you can from menu.lst - even booting other OS's... GRand Unified Boot loader indeed!

The thing which worries me is live CDs moving away from floppy emulation, which causes CD's not to boot on some lsystems with a less capable BIOS.