making a dos bootdisk from knoppix?

[reecegeorge]

hi there,

i have tried to make a win 98 bootdisk from a live knoppix install. am just testing it to see if its possible in case i ever need to use a dos bootdisk and didnt have one laying around.

from knoppix i have access to my win 98 partition, formatted a floppy from knoppix and selected the 'dos' format. then i coppied the following files across:

ASPI2DOS.SYS
ASPI4DOS.SYS
ASPI8DOS.SYS
ASPI8U2.SYS
ASPICD.SYS
AUTOEXEC.BAT
BTCDROM.SYS
BTDOSM.SYS
COMMAND.COM
CONFIG.SYS
DRVSPACE.BIN
EBD.CAB
EXTRACT.EXE
FDISK.EXE
FINDRAMD.EXE
FLASHPT.SYS
HIMEM.SYS
OAKCDROM.SYS
RAMDRIVE.SYS
README.TXT
SETRAMD.BAT

these files were all in the following win 98 directory:
file:/mnt/hda1/windows/command/ebd

It didnt work though. my computer told me that it wasnt a bootable disk. can someone tell me what i missed

[staverts]

I believe you are missing msdos.sys and io.sys...I could be wrong its been a long time, but I believe you need those to files for the disk to boot

[garyng]

and the boot sector too which under dos is done with 'format a:/s' or 'sys a:' both will also copy io.sys, msdos.sys and command.com.

[reecegeorge]

hi there,

thanks for your help, looks like i was missing a couple of files. it also looks like windows does more thn just copy the files to the floppy.

i was comparing my disk made in knoppix with a windows bootdisk made by windows.

on the windows bootdisk it had a 0 byte file called ebd.sys so i added that file with kedit

the msdos.sys was also completely different so i edited that also.

tried it but it still dosnt work

i guess that another file has been changed also as the 'real' windows bootdisk is 2 bytes larger

[j.drake]

tried it but it still dosnt work

No, garyng is right - you must first make the disk "bootable" in DOS. Unless you do that, it won't matter how many files you copy onto it. It's very simple - from a DOS prompt you just type 'sys a:' (without quotes) and hit return. Once it's bootable, the disk doesn't care what OS you use to copy files - in fact, many of the files are utility files that you may not even need for booting into DOS.

As for myself, I'd rather know how to use Knoppix to make a disk of "Das Boot."

[garyng]

As for myself, I'd rather know how to use Knoppix to make a disk of "Das Boot."

For the boot sector, it is possible to google for some hex dump of it and there is a tool that can turn the hex dump into binary and dd that to the floppy. For the other DOS file, one can get the equivalent of freedos. Of course, it may be easier just get a freedos floppy image and dd to /dev/fd0

[Dave_Bechtel]

--A good bet is to actually MAKE THE BOOT DISK IN WINDOWS, and then do the following in Linux:

' dd if=/dev/fd0 of=~/win98-bootdisk-144.dd '

--You don't have to be root for this, what that does is copy the floppy byte-for-byte into a file in your /home dir. Then if you need a boot floppy:

' dd if=~/win98-bootdisk-144.dd of=/dev/fd0 '

--The "output" floppy doesn't even need to be formatted, dd will use the bootable image file to write the boot sector and everything will just work.

hi there,

i have tried to make a win 98 bootdisk from a live knoppix install. am just testing it to see if its possible in case i ever need to use a dos bootdisk and didnt have one laying around.

from knoppix i have access to my win 98 partition, formatted a floppy from knoppix and selected the 'dos' format. then i coppied the following files across:

ASPI2DOS.SYS
ASPI4DOS.SYS
ASPI8DOS.SYS
ASPI8U2.SYS
ASPICD.SYS
AUTOEXEC.BAT
BTCDROM.SYS
BTDOSM.SYS
COMMAND.COM
CONFIG.SYS
DRVSPACE.BIN
EBD.CAB
EXTRACT.EXE
FDISK.EXE
FINDRAMD.EXE
FLASHPT.SYS
HIMEM.SYS
OAKCDROM.SYS
RAMDRIVE.SYS
README.TXT
SETRAMD.BAT

these files were all in the following win 98 directory:
file:/mnt/hda1/windows/command/ebd

It didnt work though. my computer told me that it wasnt a bootable disk. can someone tell me what i missed

[reecegeorge]

hi there,

thanks for all that, i like the idea of using a freedos image as i would be free to distribute it on a remaster. m$ dont like their dos files distributed, espacially when a fee is charged for the cd burning costs.

they are really shooting themselves in the foot because people will start to use disks like knoppix to repair their m$ crashes and find out that linux is a very good alternative os.

thanks again for your replies, i will work on a remaster after i have finished writing the manual

regards,

reece george