Re: writing to a partition

Allan Adler <ara@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

Dan Espen <daneNO@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

Allan Adler <ara@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
I would like to partition a HD so that there is a Linux partition and
another partition that I would like to use for experiments. This is on
a machine I consider expendable.[...] I would just like to put something
on hda1 that will do something very simple, maybe a certain beep pattern
or write "Hello world" to the screen or shut the machine off. I don't want
any more than that right now, just one action to prove that the boot really
did get to hda1 and do something. After that, it can hang for all I care.

You ask strange questions. Put memtest86 there.

Thanks for answering my strange questions. I just took a look at
http://www.memtest86.com
and downloaded some stuff. They emphasize that no operating system is
needed to be able to use it. That's good.

Am I correct in concluding that I can take any bootable floppy, for example,
and execute (in Linux):
cat /dev/fd0 > /dev/hda1
to make hda1 bootable and put in lilo.conf, say,

other=/dev/hda1
optional
label=abf

get the same effect as booting the bootable floppy, except that I would
boot from /dev/hda1?

I guess I can also use dd to copy just a few bytes at a time to /dev/hda1
to see what it does, one step at a time, when it boots.

I don't remember all the install details.
It seems to me I installed it with the package manager and somewhere along
the line it offered to install itself into the boot manager and write
itself to a partition.

No need to make this complicated. If I remember right, it wasn't.

.

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