Very Computer

Hello,

I recently downloaded the boot.img and supp.img floppy image files and
RAWRITEd them onto brand-new, formatted floppies.  I'm experiencing a
strange problem with them.  I have a DEC DECpc 450ST that won't boot
from the boot floppy.  It's got the latest BIOS available for it.  The
boot floppy will boot on other PCs (I tried a Gateway).  I can boot
other floppies just fine on the DEC (older RH4.2 boot floppy, a SuSE
Linux 5.2, a DOS 6.21 floppy all boot).  I've tried creating the
floppies on both the DEC and a Gateway, and the result is the same.  I
can't figure out why the floppy won't boot on the DEC.

Can anyone think what might be going wrong?

--
PETER SCHWENK                                    |  UNIX System Administrator
Department of Mathematical Sciences              |  University of Delaware

 > I recently downloaded the boot.img and supp.img floppy image
 > files and RAWRITEd them onto brand-new, formatted floppies.  I'm
 > experiencing a strange problem with them.  I have a DEC DECpc
 > 450ST that won't boot from the boot floppy.  It's got the latest
 > BIOS available for it.  The boot floppy will boot on other PCs
 > (I tried a Gateway).  I can boot other floppies just fine on the
 > DEC (older RH4.2 boot floppy, a SuSE Linux 5.2, a DOS 6.21
 > floppy all boot).  I've tried creating the floppies on both the
 > DEC and a Gateway, and the result is the same.  I can't figure
 > out why the floppy won't boot on the DEC.

Been there, tried all that (booting DOS floppies and RH4.2 floppies
etc) and more (tried fitting a replacement floppy drive, tried
disabling cache in BIOS settings, tried... you name it).

I gave in and registered with RedHat for support. They think it's
strange and can't explain it.

However I later thought to do it a different way, which may not work
for you as it sounds as though you don't have the CD? I put my CD
drivers on a DOS boot floppy, booted from that, and ran autoboot off
the CD - installed fine.

--
Simon Child

Quote:> I put my CD
> drivers on a DOS boot floppy, booted from that, and ran autoboot off
> the CD - installed fine.

> --
> Simon Child

Actually, I'm beginning to suspect that RH has purposely disabled this
function. This based on observing many pleas to ng's - no valid
replies forthcoming.

BTW, were *you* able to create boot floppy(s) after your CD RH
install?

Vacuo
-.  ..---  -.-  --.-  .-  

 > But he has already installed. He wants to have floppy(s) that he
 > can boot from.

Rereading his post he doesn't appear to say that, though you may be
correct.

 > BTW, were *you* able to create boot floppy(s) after your CD RH
 > install?

I created a boot floppy during the install, and tested it and it
worked.

But I can't still boot the RH5.1 installation boot floppy, either
the original supplied in the boxed set, or two others that I made
from the CD, on this machine. They will all successfuly boot a
different machine.

I was installing to a machine with RH4.2 on it. 4.2 boot disk booted
fine. 5.1 wouldn't, hung loading initrd.img (IIRC)

Made a 5.1 boot disk off the CD on another machine using rawrite -
no good.

Made a 5.1 boot disk off the CD on the 4.2 machine using dd (in case
it was a floppy head alignment problem, so I made the disk on the
machine that I was trying to boot)

Tried changing the floppy drive

Tried all sorts.

In my linux box (which installed 4.2 OK) I could not boot any of my
three 5.1 install boot floppies (which all worked in another
machine) in either of the floppy drives.

But having eventually installed via autoboot off CD the emergency
boot floppy works whilst the install boot floppy does not!

--
Simon Child

I'm not sure if this will help, but here's some of my experience.
Following a recompile of my kernel, I wanted to generate a new boot
disk. While in the directory where the kernel resided I typed:

        dd if=vmlinuz of=/dev/fd0

This copied the kernel (named vmlinuz) to the floppy in the a: drive.
This wasn't enough, though, since booting it failed when it was unable
to mount a root file system. The boot disk HOWTO told me then to type:

        rdev /dev/fd0 /dev/hda4

where hda4 is where my root fs is.

Diskette booted fine after that.

Ollie

Just to clarify my plight...

I can boot any other floppy disk that I've tried on the DECpc, except for the
RH5.1 boot floppy.  I haven't installed it on the system because I can't get the
floppy to boot.  I even went out and bought the boxed set of RH5.1 (the official
3-CD box), and it's floppy didn't work either (I wasn't surprised at this
point).

Now, I'm trying to figure out how to boot from the CDROM.  It's a SCSI CDROM (ID
6).  I've got two SCSI disks (IDs 0 and 1), both 1GB.  The controller is an
Adaptec 1740.  I've got DOS installed in a 100MB partition on the first disk
(duh!).  Can anyone think of an inventive way to get the CDROM to boot?  Would
it work if I made it ID 0?  I might try that for fun.

I've got SuSE Linux 5.2 installed on the rest of the disks (/ and swap on the
rest of the first, /usr on the second disk).  Is there an inventive way to get
LILO to boot from the CDROM?

This is the kookiest situation I've encountered with Linux!  I can boot the
RH5.1 Boot Floppy on any other machine I try!

As one more piece of information, the DECpc 450st is an EISA-bus computer.  The
BIOS is the latest one from the DEC web site.

Thanks in advance for your help!

I read in the RH5.1 manual about the method of installing without booting
floppies by invoking the <CDROM>:\DOSUTILS\AUTOBOOT.BAT batch file in DOS.  I
had to go rooting around for a DOS CDROM driver for my Adaptec 1740 card, but
once I had that everything fell into place.  I'm now able to install RH5.1 on
this odd-ball DECpc 450st.  Thanks for responding to my questions!