[KLUG Members] initrd

[Andrew Thompson]

On Friday 12 July 2002 11:51 pm, you wrote:
> This is especially great because I have never gotten something like
> Tom's root boot disk written to floppy. dd always croaks on something,
> not sure what....

If by 'dd' you mean disk drive, I have a hunch.

Tom's root boot disk uses an oddball format to get more space on the floppy, 
about 1.7MB on disks advertised as 1.44. Though not commonly used, it is a 
valid format, both readable and bootable from just about any PC drive, as any 
regular tomsrtbt user can attest. However, note that I said 'just about' any 
PC drive. Quoting from http://www.toms.net/rb/tomsrtbt.FAQ :

Virtually all 1.44 drives support 1.722 just fine, but it is possible for
an extended format to break a floppy drive, use tomsrtbt at your own risk.
The install does mknod to make /dev/fd0u1722 if you don't have it already.

My guess is, your drive falls outside the realm of 'virtually all' in this 
case. The simplest solution would be to get a new floppy drive (about ten to 
fifteen bucks these days), or if you have more than one machine, try any you 
haven't already and see if one does the job. Of course, if your drive can't 
write 1.722, it might not manage to read it, either. Anyway, this is my best 
guess. Good luck!

AndrewT