If you want to find out about the boot & base floppies, install the boot-floppies package that is used to build them. While it's not intended as a tutorial, it contains the information you're looking for.
Floppy-split is a utility that comes with boot-floppies that splits a file across several disks; it writes a header (including a disk label, so it can tell if you give it the wrong disk) and then a hunk of data. The base floppies, when re-assembled without these headers and ignoring trailing garbage, produce the base2_1.tgz file that lives alongside them in disks-i386/current, and which you can place on a hard disk partition to avoid having to muck about with the base floppies at all, if that is an option at install time. On Tue, Nov 30, 1999 at 02:01:54AM +0700, Oki DZ wrote > > > Laurent PICOULEAU wrote: > > $ file /cdrom/dists/slink/main/disks-i386/current/resc1440.bin > > /cdrom/dists/slink/main/disks-i386/current/resc1440.bin: x86 boot sector, > > system SYSLINUX, FAT (12 bit) unlabeled, 2880 sectors > > > > So this is fat with syslinux installed. lowmem.bin also > > drv1440.bin is an msdos floppy too > > I have tried to mount it, it wouldn't work. It seems that resc. disk > contains the kernel dd'ed directly to the floppy. > > > $ file /cdrom/dists/slink/main/disks-i386/current/base14-1.bin > > /cdrom/dists/slink/main/disks-i386/current/base14-1.bin: data > > > > So this is tar floppy > > If you do "head -1 base14-1.bin", you'd get something like: > "Floppy split 0.1."; I'm not sure what it is, but it seems that it's the > name of the program that's used for splitting the base2_2.tgz file (yes, > after booting the resc. disk and having the rest of the floppies copied > to the disk when doing the installation, the floppies become a file with > that name; well, something similar to it). > > file says "data", but unfortunately, .bin files are not tar files. [snip] John P. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Oh - I - you know - my job is to fear everything." - Bill Gates in Denmark
