BOOT/RESCUE CD
( replacement for the boot floppy )


Because some new computers don´t have a floppy-drive anymore, new versions of “mkrescue” have the option to make a bootable rescue.iso you can burn to CD and use instead of a boot floppy.

I tested this in a few distros and up to now only Slackware 9.1 and Mandrake 9.2 have a version of “mkrescue” ( 2.3 ) that has the --iso option. Mandrake 9.1, Redhat 9 and SuSE 8.2 still have an older version of mkrescue that did not include the --iso option, but I´m sure the future versions will have it too.

Making a boot-CD is mainly important for the new Mandrake 9.2 that needs a 1722kB floppy to make a boot-floppy, and rumors are spreading that over-sized floppies are not very stable.

NOTE: "mkrescue" only works if you use Lilo as bootloader because it reads the info from /etc/lilo.conf

Here is how to make a boot CD for your Mandrake 9.2 ( default kernel ):

If you use a kernel other than the default kernel such as the 4GB RAM kernel you will have to adapt the numbers for intrd and vmlinuz :

After running the command you will find an rescue.iso file in your /home and can simply burn it:

( NOTE: With kernel 2.6 it is dev=/dev/hdc or /dev/hdd and not dev=0,0,0 !! See Tip cdrecord )


That will burn the CD . . . I tested it and it boots fine from the CD ( even quicker than from a floppy )


In Slackware 9.1 its even more simple:

This will do the trick and read the lines from lilo.conf to know what files to put in the rescue.iso


NOTE: With the new kernels and initrd.img becoming larger, the chances are that you will need this technique in other distros soon.




Bruno


-- Nov 4 2003 ( Revised Dec 9 2005 ) --