gregphil
August 31st, 2008, 03:34 PM
There are various posts about this topic already, but none of them actually worked for me using a new Ubuntu 8.04.1 installation. Since I finally figured out how to do this, I thought I would share the results.
For reference, my computer is setup like this:
Windows Xp installed on an IDE drive /dev/hda using whole disk
Ubuntu 8.04.1 installed on SATA drive /dev/sda using whole disk
Kubuntu 8.04.1 installed on SATA drive /dev/sdb using whole disk
If the BIOS are set to an IDE boot I get windows. If the BIOS are set to SCSI boot I boot into GRUB on the MBR of the primary SATA disk. This is how I have the BIOS set for the remainder of this post (to boot to GRUB on the MBR of a SATA disk). If I change the BIOS boot order it breaks GRUB, I think because the disks get assigned in a different order (hd2,0) becomes (hd0,0) etc. (this is annoying....)
Once booted into Ubuntu I wanted to make a backup floppy boot disk just in case something ever happened to the Linux install. I followed various posts I could find on the internet but none actually worked. Below is what finally did work for me:
1. Open a terminal window
2. $ su and enter password to become the root 'super user'
3. # gformat --device=/dev/fd0
Set format type to DOS in the GUI application, for some reason whenever I tried to format these to Linux ext2 the floppy could not be used in later steps. I can't explain this. The command line "fdformat" also would not make usable floppies. However, once you have a usable blank formatted floppy:
4. # mke2fs /dev/fd0
5. # mount /dev/fd0 /media/floppy
6. # mkdir -p /media/floppy/boot/grub
7. # cd /boot/grub
8. # cp * /media/floppy/boot/grub
Note I copied ALL files, not just stage1, stage2, menu.lst and device.map files like some other posts suggested. The resulting floppy would not fully work for me unless I copied ALL files.
9. # umount /dev/fd0
10. # grub
11. grub> device (fd0) /dev/fd0
Note the need for the 2nd parameter, device (fd0) would not work
12. grub> root (fd0)
Ignore the message about not recognizing the partiton header.
13. grub> setup (fd0)
14. grub> quit
15. # exit
16. $ exit
The floppy you just wrote should now be bootable and have the entire GRUB menu on it (and actually working). Make sure your BIOS are set to try a floppy boot before the hard disk boot to test the boot loader floppy.
Good Luck! :)
For reference, my computer is setup like this:
Windows Xp installed on an IDE drive /dev/hda using whole disk
Ubuntu 8.04.1 installed on SATA drive /dev/sda using whole disk
Kubuntu 8.04.1 installed on SATA drive /dev/sdb using whole disk
If the BIOS are set to an IDE boot I get windows. If the BIOS are set to SCSI boot I boot into GRUB on the MBR of the primary SATA disk. This is how I have the BIOS set for the remainder of this post (to boot to GRUB on the MBR of a SATA disk). If I change the BIOS boot order it breaks GRUB, I think because the disks get assigned in a different order (hd2,0) becomes (hd0,0) etc. (this is annoying....)
Once booted into Ubuntu I wanted to make a backup floppy boot disk just in case something ever happened to the Linux install. I followed various posts I could find on the internet but none actually worked. Below is what finally did work for me:
1. Open a terminal window
2. $ su and enter password to become the root 'super user'
3. # gformat --device=/dev/fd0
Set format type to DOS in the GUI application, for some reason whenever I tried to format these to Linux ext2 the floppy could not be used in later steps. I can't explain this. The command line "fdformat" also would not make usable floppies. However, once you have a usable blank formatted floppy:
4. # mke2fs /dev/fd0
5. # mount /dev/fd0 /media/floppy
6. # mkdir -p /media/floppy/boot/grub
7. # cd /boot/grub
8. # cp * /media/floppy/boot/grub
Note I copied ALL files, not just stage1, stage2, menu.lst and device.map files like some other posts suggested. The resulting floppy would not fully work for me unless I copied ALL files.
9. # umount /dev/fd0
10. # grub
11. grub> device (fd0) /dev/fd0
Note the need for the 2nd parameter, device (fd0) would not work
12. grub> root (fd0)
Ignore the message about not recognizing the partiton header.
13. grub> setup (fd0)
14. grub> quit
15. # exit
16. $ exit
The floppy you just wrote should now be bootable and have the entire GRUB menu on it (and actually working). Make sure your BIOS are set to try a floppy boot before the hard disk boot to test the boot loader floppy.
Good Luck! :)