Kirk McElhearn wrote:
> I'm really getting fed up with this problem. So many people said it was
> so easy to use a big HD and boot more than one distribution, I wish there
> were some way to figure out why it won't work for me....
>
> I just tried something - I have a Mandrake boot floppy, and I figured
> that maybe I could just copy it and change some config in the floppy to
> get the other distro to boot. But when trying to access the floppy, I
> get a message Could not list directory contents. Is this floppy some
> format that cannot be read by Mandrake?
I don't think that Mandrake should have any problems listing the contents of
the disk.
Have you tried listing the contents from a dos boot, like into Win9x or NT?
If you can list the contents there, then you can definitely list the contents
with Linux, but the mount definition may need to be changed to specify the
correct filesystem type.
To check the latter, you can try mounting the floppy to ext2 and to vfat, if
ext2 fails. If both of these fail, then haven't a clue.
mount -vt vfat /dev/fd0H1440 /mnt/floppy
mount -vt ext2 /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy
mount -vt vfat /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy
You could use /mnt/a:, instead of /mnt/floppy. Doesn't matter, as long as
the /mnt mount point isn't already mounted. The only time this can otherwise
matter is if you try to mount without specifying the -t option and argument.
If none of these mounts works, then haven't a clue.
If any of these mounts works and you can't list the contents of the floppy
disk, then haven't a clue.
On the other hand, the above is based on the assumption that you're trying to
list the contents of a Linux boot floppy, which should be listable.
As for large disks, you might find some useful information through the LDP
http://www.linuxdoc.org
Check through the list of HOWTOs. You should find one on using Large Disks.
Don't know if it'll contain the answer to your problems, but you should read
the howto anyway.
mike
