[ltp] usb floppy on TP R30 & boot using lilo floppy

[James Holden]

It may be that the USB floppy driver doesn't support writing to the 
whole device , ie: /dev/sda but just access though partitions.

It makes sense that this drive is showing up as a SCSI device, since my 
USB digital camera does, and so does my Zip drive.

If it's using the usb-storage driver, then it's going to show up as a 
SCSI block device.

I'd doubt you could boot from a USB floppy drive though, but I might be 
wrong.

/dev/hda would be your primary master hard disk. If you're trying to 
make a boot floppy, don't write the boot sector to your hard disk's boot 
sector, or you might be in for a nasty surprise next time you start your 
machine up.

James

Tod Harter wrote:

>*** List MOVED use linux-thinkpad@linux-thinkpad.org for future postings ***
>
>On Saturday 19 October 2002 05:32 am, Giuseppe Leto wrote:
>
>I think you need to substitute 'hda' for 'sda' there. This isn't a floppy 
>problem. '/dev/sda' would refer to your first SCSI harddrive... /dev/hda 
>would refer to your first IDE hard drive. Since you don't HAVE a SCSI hard 
>drive you can't copy a boot sector off it... Honestly I'm not sure why you 
>would ever get past the first command (mke2fs). The only reason I can think 
>of being that a USB floppy shows up as /dev/sda or somesuch, but I have no 
>experience with usb floppy drives.
>
>Personally I would tell you to do something a LOT simpler. Just use the 
>mkbootdisk utility which comes with RedHat and Mandrake (and probably other 
>distros too). It takes care of all this junk for you.
>
>  
>
>>*** List MOVED use linux-thinkpad@linux-thinkpad.org for future postings
>>***
>>
>>Hi all,
>>I have been trying for a while to make a boot floppy for my TP R30.
>>The driver is an usb one and is correctely see from linux mandrake 8.1
>>when booting from hda.
>>I have done all the staff in the linux boot diskette howto to prepare
>>the boot lilo diskette.
>>(say:
>>mke2fs -N 24 -m 0 /dev/sda 1078
>>mount /dev/sda /mnt/floppy
>>rm -rf /mnt/floppy/lost+found/
>>cd /mnt/floppy
>>mkdir {boot,dev}
>>cp -R /dev/{null,sda} /mnt/floppy/dev
>>cp /boot/boot.b /mnt/floppy/boot
>>cp lilobd/bdlilo.conf /mnt/floppy/
>>cp /boot/it-latin1.klt /mnt/floppy/boot/
>>cp /boot/vmlinuz /mnt/floppy/)
>>
>>When I try to install lilo on the boot sector of the floppy (lilo -v -C
>>bdlilo.conf -r /mnt/floppy)
>>I got the following:
>>Reading boot sector from /dev/sda
>>Fatal: open /dev/sda: No such file or directory
>>
>>What does it mean, is it possible to find a way out?
>>Thank you
>>
>>G.
>>
>>00000000000000000000000000000000000
>>Here it is the bdlilo.conf:
>>
>>boot=/dev/sda
>>install=/boot/boot.b
>>map=/boot/map
>>#read-write
>>read-only
>>backup=/dev/null
>>compact
>>#keytable=/boot/it-latin1.klt    ###us.klt
>>prompt
>>#nowarn
>>timeout=50
>>#message=/boot/message
>>#menu-scheme=wb:bw:wb:bw
>># disk=/dev/sda   #an attempt already made
>>#     bios=0x80
>># disk=/dev/hda
>>#    bios=0x81
>>image=vmlinuz
>>   label=Bootdisk
>>   root=/dev/sda
>>    
>>