[ale] homemade bootdisk problems

[Joseph A Knapka]

Calvin Harrigan wrote:
> 
> I don't think that you can do a dd just like that...
> How does the data of the root image get entered into the FAT for
> instance...

There is no FAT. There's no filesystem at all on a
raw bootdisk. The root image Ben is writing
to the back of the boot disk isn't a filesystem,
either; it's a file containing an image of a
filesystem.
 
Ben wrote: 

> Something like:
> 
> dd if=root.img of=/dev/fd0u1743 bs=1k seek=338
> 
> Previous to that I dd'ed the kernel:
> 
> dd if=kernel.img of=/dev/fd0u1743 bs=1k
> 
> then:
> 
> rdev /dev/fd0u1743 /dev/fd0u1743
> rdev -R /dev/fd0u1743 0
> rdev -r /dev/fd0u1743 16722

It looks like you're doing everything right. However,
according to the rdev man page, "rdev -r" sets the
*size* of the ramdisk, not its offset. Maybe that's
the problem? (And yes, the howto you cite directly
contradicts that, but it's worth a try. Maybe
recent versions of rdev have changed this
behavior? Anyway, it seems that the loader and/or
rdev should be able to figure out the ramdisk
offset on their own, but how can the kernel
know the ramdisk size without being told?)

Cheers,

-- Joe
    "If you're out there gettin' honey, you don't go killin' all the
bees."
     -- Joe Strummer

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