Boot Ready Made Image

[jason7007]

Hi,
I just downloaded Solar grub_disk.img.

I don't know what to do with it so that I can boot from real floppy and put my kernel.

Can someone guide me how to boot it in floppy?

Thank you very much in advance.

[Phugoid]

Insert a floppy into drive A: (Cygwin should call this fd0). Then issue this command in your Cygwin shell:

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dd if=grub_disk.img of=/dev/fd0 bs=512 count=2880

This will destroy everything on the floppy and replace it with the data in the image.

Then, restart your computer with the floppy in the drive (make sure your BIOS is configured to check the floppy drive first for the boot disk).

If you want to place a kernel onto the floppy first, try something like MTools. Look here:
http://www.osdev.org/osfaq2/index.php/Disk%20Images%20Under%20Windows

[Phugoid]

You will need to type commands in the GRUB shell when it is loaded to actually boot your kernel, or you can create a menu. See the GRUB manual (http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/html_node/index.html), sections 4 and 5.

Even though section 5 states that the configuration file should be called menu.lst, my version expects it to be called menu.cfg.

[jason7007]

Thanks Phugoid,

I was abled to boot in floppy. But not complete, when I looked at MTools to put my kernel, it was confusing to follow.

Any easy way to put my kernel in the ready made grub_image file?

Thanks anyway

[Phugoid]

Well, the link for disk images under Windows has several methods. I prefer MTools (even though I use it with Cygwin) because it does not install any kernel-mode drivers or have annoying locking effects or delays; though I have not tried all the alternatives. I found it worthwhile to learn it once, and use it.

Since you have Cygwin installed, you could also try this:
http://www.osdev.org/osfaq2/index.php/Disk%20Images%20Under%20Linux

If you do not need to manipulate the image but only the floppy, you can use Windows itself (put the floppy in the drive and access the filesystem on it through A:\). If you later want to make an image from it, you can use dd (reverse if and of). However, writing to and reading from the floppy can be quite slow.

[Pype.Clicker]

see http://clicker.sourceforge.net/wiclicke ... rubSupport

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C32/> cp grub_image.img disk.img
C32/> mcopy -i disk.img kernel/kernel.elf ::
C32/> mcopy -i disk.img kernel/ramdisk.sfs ::

that's basically all you need to copy your files on the image (here at the root directory)

If you don't feel like editting GRUB menu at first, you can use the embedded (and handy) command line:

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kernel kernel.elf
module ramdisk.sfs
boot