How to boot with no CD, only HD and floppy?

Booting, installing, newbie
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marksouth2000
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Joined: Wed 05 Apr 2006, 20:43

#16 Post by marksouth2000 »

pminmo wrote:Relooking at it, this is my plan:
1. put sbminst.exe on a floppy
2. bring up dos and start sbminst (a:sbminst.exe -t us -d 128) on the HD

Hopefully then I will be able to switch the floppy out and put in the cd drive, and be able to boot a live cd such as Puppy or Gparted?
That's not quite the simplest way. Simplest is to use any machine with a net connection to (a) download Smart boot Manager - you need SBMINST.EXE on a Windows machine and sbminst on Linux (b) run sbminst to make an SBM boot floppy - running it without parameters will give you a list of commandline options to use (c) boot your floppy-only machine with the SBM floppy (d) at the SBM screen, use the arrow keys to highlight your hard disk and use the menu to do "Install SBM" (e) shutdown, fit CD drive, power on (f) wait for the SBM screen to come up, press a key to stop the countdown and insert the Puppy CD (g) do Ctrl-I to rescan and then select the CD to boot from it.

I don't know about the "128" in your commandline above, I haven't used SBM from Windows or DOS, but the floppy is normally "A:" isn't it?

Under Linux you would do

Code: Select all

sbminst -t us -d /dev/fd0
Good luck,
Mark

marksouth2000
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#17 Post by marksouth2000 »

ICPUG wrote:I re-read your first post and agree that from what you said Smart Boot Manager will boot from CD. I don't like the idea of writing to the MBR though. That is just a personal preference. Do you know whether Smart Boot Manager works with XP? XP writes to the MBR as well and usually gets upset when something else does!
As GuestToo also mentioned, all the XP entry in the MBR does is pass control to the actual Windows bootloader in the superblock of the Windows partition, so you can put practically any bootloader in the MBR as long as it can chainload.

The point of putting SBM in the MBR instead of anything else is that it needs no configuration. Unlike having GRUB or LILO in the MBR, you don't need to edit the setup when you change a system or add a new partition. Just boot the system to SBM, type Ctrl-I to get it to rescan the partition table and it will list all the partitions. As long as each one has its own loader, it will boot.

SBM will boot XP or any Windows flavour. If you install Windows after SBM, it will hose SBM in the MBR, but (unlike rebuilding a complex GRUB configuration) you only have to boot once with your SBM floppy to re-install SBM to the MBR, takes only a minute.

Hope this is all clear now, despite being so wordy....

Cheers,
Mark 8)

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Gn2
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#18 Post by Gn2 »

Further note of encouragement - IF you hose the MBR ;
Use XP's "fixmbr" to restore partition tables !
> They are not lost - get "moved & stored" safely out of MBR sector.

Nothing is "written in Stone"
(Back-up & 8) can play to heart's content)

PPS: http://gentoo-wiki.com/TIP_Chainloading ... _from_GRUB

pminmo
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#19 Post by pminmo »

Ok, I'm confused again after reading the new threads. Couple of facts:

1. Laptop has win98 on it now, while I want a copy of win98 on it in the end, I will probably blow it away anyway as it has issues.
2. Bios has no CD boot capability.
3. I want to install the boot manger on the HD not a floppy.
4. I'm network connected on all my computers, so downloads and tool creation is not an issue, except they are all WinXP machines, no Linux machines network connected. One WinXP desktop also has Ubuntu on it, but the wireless card isn't suported in Ubuntu. And being a Linux beginer, simple tasks are more involved. (I had a heck of a time modifying the menu.lst for Grub on that machine as I couldn't figure out how to modifiy a root owned file. I got there but it took an hour or so)

5. My desired end state of the machine is a boot manager that allows me to select HD installed OS's and liveCD tools. Tenatively that would be Puppy, Win98, and FreeDos and or another Linux (DSL, Ubuntu....).

I'm thinking SBM is what I want, and I want to install it on the HD's MBR.
So maybe I'll fdisk the machine froma DOS floppy, install SBM from floppy, boot a Gparted live CD, configure the partitions to support my end state, reinstall Win98 and reinstall SBM after Win98 messes the MBR. Install Puppy and go from there.

Issues?
Thanks for the help,
Linux Newbee
Phil

So far I'm liking what I see of Linux, just have a relearning curve of tools and commands.

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Gn2
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#20 Post by Gn2 »

No issues AFAIK - SBM will allow you to boot -
Once used you have choice of leaving it or deleting it:
If by some accident you did (temporarily) overwite any Win-xx MBR - It is easily corrected to original state:
You also may use XP to chain load - or Grub w/or without chain loading.
relearning curve
Yes, it is very confusing at first ;

But when once you have already taken pre-caution of backing up first that frees you to ...

Linux can co-exist very nicely w/.Win.xx . - but XP will try to control
& wipe records of any other O/System - unless tamed by Linux.

Best of luck, you will enjoy Puppy !

pminmo
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#21 Post by pminmo »

I've got sbm installed seems to work, but each time i select the cd boot it gives me an error when I answer n to save, but when I retry it it works. booted gparted, but no mouse, now trying puppy.

GuestToo
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#22 Post by GuestToo »

i need to wait 5 or 10 seconds until the cd drive has finished initializing before i can use Smart Boot Manager to boot the cd

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Gn2
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#23 Post by Gn2 »

Without specific error Msg - cannot advise - only thoughts - Was it an "error" - or merely a warning about writes to a mounted partition?
Any time (fdisk etal) a partiton table is altered - if mounted, no write back to MBR should be allowed until re-booted.

If re-sizing was not prime reason to use it - LInux fdisk will accomplish all needed.
Up to user - I prefer fdisk to cfdisk, or sfdisk or parted (also - Never trusted third -party tools) !

Linux for Linux, and Win.xx tools for Win.xx
Once Puppy is up/running - use it a few times before deciding
where to store the "save file"

Please read all info about options on that topic.
Did you back- up needed stuff yet - if not do so - why take any unnecessary risks ? .

IMO - Puppy will wait - but lost personal items are precious

Enjoy

ICPUG
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#24 Post by ICPUG »

Thanks to Mark and GuestToo for the lengthy explanations regarding SBM and XP. This seems to be more useful than I thought, although I still prefer my method for a simple Puppy frugal install where there is no requirement to boot a CD.

However, as SBM can boot a CD that the BIOS can't, perhaps it can be used to boot a USB memory stick. If so, I am very interested because I have an XP machine that will not boot memory sticks.

ICPUG

pminmo
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#25 Post by pminmo »

The error looks like it is because of spinup time for the cd. If I wait I don't get it.

Now my next problem and maybe I should start a new thread on this one. My mouse doesn't work once puppy comes up. It could be the video wizzard also as I can't get past turning it off without the mouse.

A live DSL CD boots and the mouse works. And the messages when puppy is going through it's setup says it sees a ps2 mouse.

Any suggestions?

Rickrandom
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#26 Post by Rickrandom »

I looked at ICPUG's helpful guide,

http://www.icpug.org.uk/national/linnwi ... 4steps.htm

which I then used to get my XP laptop dual-booting after he pointed to it earlier in this thread. Previously (for a couple of months) I was popping the CD in and out depending what I wanted to boot. The guide was written with enough detail that I was confident I wasn't going to do any damage, whereas I was always a bit wary about doing things like changing the MBR.

As well as being easy to follow small step by small step, the guide's explanations gave me a better understanding of how the boot process works.

Obviously there's a lot more scope for a full explanation on several web pages than here on the forum. It worked for me as very much a newbie, and using what I learnt, I'm now also booting 2.12 beta.

I'll have a look at smart boot manager sometime as it seems very clever, but I'll leave what works well alone for a little longer.

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Walt H
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related yet different question

#27 Post by Walt H »

Here's a related question I don't think I've quite seen answered anywhere as yet. (Although it's possible my search was not quite refined enough to uncover the information.)

I have an old laptop on which the CD-ROM has apparently died (at least the controller cable is apparently dead, as replacing the drive had no effect). The machine has an old version of Feather Linux on it (the machine is Linux-only), but I'd like to try something a bit more up-to-date on it. I'm worried that trying to upgrade would break everything, so I'm leaning toward trying from scratch.

I currently have a working floppy on the drive and a network connection. The hard drive (I believe) has two partitions I might also be able to get a USB stick working on it (it worked when I was able to boot Puppy from the CD-ROM on this machine), but the machine cannot boot from USB.

What is the best approach for upgrading/replacing the Linux distribution now on this machine and what distribution might be best for this? Much of the discussion I've seen here and elsewhere assumes a machine with Windows on it. That is not my situation.

Is trying a boot floppy and a USB stick the best way to go? If so, would I then be able to install to the hard drive from the USB stick? (The stick is 512 meg.) I don't want to permanently devote the stick to housing my distibution of choice, so a hard drive installation is preferred. Is an installation of a distibution over the internet on top of an existing installation even possible?

I have done some searching, but separating the wheat from the chaff has been a bit daunting. Thanks in advance for any advice or suggestions.
Walt

Now that you point it out to me, the answer seems painfully obvious.

muggins
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#28 Post by muggins »

debian, last time i looked, can be installed with 2 floppys, and an internet connection to download packages.

vectorlinux standard, at least 5.0 standard, had a vinstall script, so you could have the iso image on the usbkey, run the script, and this would install to hdisk from the iso image.

and of course there's our favourite, puppy! where you could mount the image, extract vmlinuz, initrd.gz & pup_212.sfs, copy to hdisk, then amend your featherlinux boot method to boot puppy.

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Walt H
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#29 Post by Walt H »

Okay. When I get some time to play around with it, I'll give one of these a try (either Puppy or Vector probably, as I've never had much luck installing straight Debian).
Walt

Now that you point it out to me, the answer seems painfully obvious.

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