[ale] bootstrapping linux (fwd)

[George A. Nies]

Greg Hankins wrote:
> 
> Some piece of crap "operating system" (W95) overwrote my MBR so I
> can't boot up linux any more. Furthermore, the rescue disks I made
> when I initially installed linux (version 1.?) won't work with my new
> 2.0 kernel. I downloaded a new boot.img/supp.img from
> ftp.cc.gatech.edu:/pub/linux/distributions/redhat/redhat-4.1/i386/images,
> and can now get my machine to boot off of floppy, but it boots up
> using the floppy as the root filesystem.
> 

Ok, there is a simple answer for this.
ftp to ftp.cc.gatech.edu and look in
pub/linux/distributions/slackware/bootdsks.144
get the file called "bare.i" (assuming you have IDE hard drives)
also get RAWRITE.EXE
use RAWRITE to copy bare.i to a 3.5" floppy
boot from that floppy
at the _first_ prompt type
mount root=/dev/hd??  
where ??=your root device ex hda1 hda2 ...
This will boot the kernel on the floppy (currently 2.0.27) but
use your harddrive for the root disk.
once the system is up, log in as root and type 
lilo

That should be the end of your problems

	-George