Re: usb hp floppy drive recognition fedora 4 installation

From: Lenard (Lenard_at_127.0.0.1)
Date: 09/25/05 

Date: Sun, 25 Sep 2005 17:03:06 GMT

P Ruetz wrote:

>
> "Lenard" <Lenard@127.0.0.1> wrote in message
> news:PRCTe.1262$mj1.1086@newssvr30.news.prodigy.com...
>> panku88@gmail.com wrote:
>>
>>
>> Boot into Linux and copy the boot image from the first sector of your
>> boot partition. You'll want to take 512 bytes of this partition once,
>> and write it out to a file called bootsect.lnx. The entry should look
>> like:
>>
>> dd if=/dev/hdXy of=/bootsect.lnx bs=512 count=1
>>
>> Move that file onto your c:\ drive and edit boot.ini, adding the
>> following line:
>>
>> c:\bootsect.lnx="Linux"
>>
>> Note: /dev/hdXy is your Linux boot partition, for example /dev/hda2
>
>
> This did not work for me with CentOS (maybe that is the problem). I
> have CentOS 4.1 in /dev/sdb7 (in an extended partition if that is
> important). When I look at the bootsect.lnx file (od -h) produced
> above it is all zeros.

Try the following, from the console or xterm session type something like
(since you say your system is SCSI or SATA); fdisk -l /dev/sd*

Mine is IDE based so I will use /dev/hd* instead in the command. I
edited out non-needed info from the output;

$ fdisk -l /dev/hd*

Disk /dev/hda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 10513 84445641 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2 10514 14593 32772600 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5 10514 14593 32772568+ b W95 FAT32

Disk /dev/hdb: 40.0 GB, 40037760000 bytes
16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 77578 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes

   Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 * 1 203 102280+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdb2 204 44288 22218840 83 Linux
/dev/hdb3 44289 75496 15728832 83 Linux
/dev/hdb4 75497 77578 1049328 5 Extended
/dev/hdb5 75497 77576 1048288+ 82 Linux swap /
Solaris

The first hard drive (/dev/hda) is for Windows 2000 Professional
(partition hda1) and also has a commonly shared vfat partition (hda5)
to transfer files back and forth. My second hard drive is used
exclusively for CentOS-4.1

Since I know that the first stage of the bootloader Grub is installed
(done during the installation of CentOS) on the MBR of hard disk device
hda to copy the boot sector of this drive I would use;

dd if=/dev/hda of=bootsect.lnx bs=512 count=1

The results are a binary file which can be viewed with a hex editor, the
first few bytes look like; ëHlbaLILO Z

As you report your bootloader is installed on the first SCSI or SATA
device so use /dev/sda (or maybe something else) here.

<snip>

>> Starting with a blank *formatted* msdos floppy, as root from the
>> console or xterm session;
>>
>> # mount -t msdos /dev/sda /media/floppy
>>
>> # grub-install --root-directory=/media/floppy /dev/sda
>>
>> # cp /boot/grub/grub.conf /media/floppy/boot/grub/grub.conf
>>
>> # umount /media/floppy
>>
>
> I couldn't get this to work either. Do you mean /dev/fd0 in the mount
> command? Otherwise it seems you are mounting the first serial drive
> as the floppy.

OK, since your system is seems to already be SCSI based, an external USB
floppy device may be the SCSI device of 'sdc' or something else. After
the system is booted plug the USB floppy in and have a look at the end
of the command '/bin/dmesg' without the quotes, sample below (my USB
floppy is the only USB (scsi) device on the system);

usb-storage: device found at 8
usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
  Vendor: MITSUMI Model: USB FDD Rev: 1039
  Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 00
Attached scsi removable disk sda at scsi2, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
usb-storage: device scan complete

The output shows that the USB floppy device is available as 'sda', if I
plug it in after some other device then it might be 'sdb' instead.

> Should it be /dev/fd0 in the grub-install command?

Only if you have a standard installed internal floppy disk. 

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