A Boot Disk

The very first thing you will need when your system cannot boot from the hard disk will be a boot disk. It will allow you to boot your system up and, in a matter of minutes, enable you to undo what rendered your system unusable.

[Note]Note

You can also use the Rescue Mode of Mandrakelinux's installation CD-ROM to boot your machine and perform some maintenance tasks, but a boot disk might prove to be useful anyway (for example, if your machine doesn't support booting from the CD-ROM drive).

Creating a Boot Floppy from the Console

Open a terminal and type the following, as root:

# mkbootdisk --device /dev/fd0 `uname -r`

and strike the Enter key, then follow the instructions given on screen.

One parameter needed by mkbootdisk is the --device [device] option, which tells mkbootdisk which device you want to write the boot disk to. In our example, we chose /dev/fd0 which is the first floppy drive in the system. In 99.9% of cases that should work. If it doesn't, just choose the right device for your floppy drive.

The other parameter needed is the [kernel-version] option, which tells mkbootdisk which kernel you want to put on the floppy. In our example, we use `uname -r` which gives as a result the name of the current running kernel. Thus, the example given will create a boot disk in the first floppy drive with the current running kernel on it.

Please note that this will create a boot disk based on your current running kernel with all the modules that kernel uses.

Testing the Boot Disk

Always test your boot floppy to make sure it actually works. There are few things more embarrassing than finding that the floppy won't boot because of media errors. If the floppy boots OK then... You are done!