how to boot with floppyconfig

**redss** · 01-10-2005, 04:26 AM

I have a computer with no usb ports, which is unable to boot off of CD, so I boot knoppix 3.4 off by booting off the 2 boot floppies that I made in knoppix.

It turns out that when you make boot floppies in knoppix, the first boot floppy is a DOS format floppy that I could also copy knoppix.sh/configs.tbz to, however the boot requires the ramdisk image off the 2nd floppy which seems to be in tar streaming format, not DOS format.

How can I boot with the floppyconfig cheatcode? the floppy drive already has a tar formatted floppy in the drive so I don't know if I can sneak the knoppix.sh/configs.tbz onto that floppy, and after the 2nd floppy (ramdisk image) is done loading, there is no time to swap floppies in the floppy drive so that it could find knoppix.sh. I even tried hooking up a 2nd floppy drive but apparently the myconf=scan does NOT check for a 2nd floppy drive.

**pureone** · 01-10-2005, 06:13 AM

they need to make a sticky about this the script for saving your configuration to floppy it says try "myconf=scan" and "myconf=/mnt/auto/floppy" this is wrong you have to do "floppyconf" i think it is there is a post in this section somewere about it

**redss** · 01-10-2005, 06:47 AM

myconf=scan has always worked fine for me... except for now when my floppy drive is pre-empted with a boot image floppy.

Since my knoppix.sh is in my B: drive, I tried the cheatcode "myconf=/dev/fd1" with no success. What would be the problem with that?

**smileeb** · 01-10-2005, 03:26 PM

When I had the cd make my 2 floppies it put everything on them so that when it booted up
it read the 1st floppy got info from the cd, then asked for the 2nd floppy to be inserted and
then went on it's way to complete the operation so that I could run from the cd.

**Harry Kuhman** · 01-10-2005, 08:27 PM

Originally Posted by smileeb

When I had the cd make my 2 floppies it put everything on them so that when it booted up
it read the 1st floppy got info from the cd, then asked for the 2nd floppy to be inserted and
then went on it's way to complete the operation so that I could run from the cd.

Which certainly works and is typical. There is so much to load at boot time before Linux can take control of the CD that it takes 2 floppies for current versions of Linux. But you can boot with only 1 CD if you want. The problem is that some systems can't boot of of the CD directly because of BIOS issues. So you can fool around and make 2 linux boot floppies, with the Linux kerner that you need to boot on them, and then boot Linux from floppy and once that is in place it can access the CD. If you do this then you need to make new boot floppies for new releases of Knoppix (if it has a new Kernel), for other Live CD's, or if you want to try to see the difference between the 2.4 snd the 2.6 kernel.

But the real problem is simply that the BIOS isn't booting the CD. You can get around this with boot loader programs like XOSL or Smart Boot Manager. Either of these can be installed to the MBR of your hard disk and will let you boot multiple OSs from the hard disk or boot from a CD, even if the BIOS does not suport CD booting. Smart Boot Manager will even let you, without installing it to hard disk, make a single boot floppy that can boot any bootable CD. No swapping of floppies, no making more floppies when the next version of Knoppix comes out, when you want to boot a different Live CD, or when you want to try the 2.6 kernel.