Debian bug report logs - #1520
mkboot won't make a boot floppy

Message received at debian-bugs:

From pixar.com!bruce Sun Oct  1 13:54:50 1995
Return-Path: <bruce@pixar.com>
Received: from pixar.com by mongo.pixar.com with smtp
	(Smail3.1.28.1 #15) id m0szVPO-000H19C; Sun, 1 Oct 95 13:54 PDT
Received: from mongo.pixar.com by pixar.com with SMTP id AA06545
  (5.67b/IDA-1.5 for debian-bugs-pipe@mongo.pixar.com); Sun, 1 Oct 1995 13:54:31 -0700
Received: by mongo.pixar.com (Smail3.1.28.1 #15)
	id m0szVPL-000GupC; Sun, 1 Oct 95 13:54 PDT
Message-Id: <m0szVPL-000GupC@mongo.pixar.com>
To: Bill Mitchell <mitchell@mdd.comm.mot.com>, debian-bugs@Pixar.com
Cc: bruce@Pixar.com
Subject: Re: Bug#1520: mkboot won't make a boot floppy 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sun, 01 Oct 1995 12:16:44 PDT."
             <Pine.SUN.3.91.951001115132.19638C-100000@bb29c> 
Date: Sun, 01 Oct 1995 13:54:47 -0700
From: Bruce Perens <bruce@Pixar.com>

Actually, mkboot did try to rdev the floppy, but it wrote the floppy to fd0
and ran rdev on fd1. I'll fix that, and the pathnames.

	Bruce

Message received at debian-bugs:

From mdd.comm.mot.com!mitchell Sun Oct  1 12:16:53 1995
Return-Path: <mitchell@mdd.comm.mot.com>
Received: from pixar.com by mongo.pixar.com with smtp
	(Smail3.1.28.1 #15) id m0szTsb-0005mpC; Sun, 1 Oct 95 12:16 PDT
Received: from motgate.mot.com by pixar.com with SMTP id AA03489
  (5.67b/IDA-1.5 for bruce@mongo.pixar.com); Sun, 1 Oct 1995 12:16:32 -0700
Received: from pobox.mot.com (pobox.mot.com [129.188.137.100]) by motgate.mot.com (8.6.11/8.6.10/MOT-3.8) with ESMTP id OAA03192; Sun, 1 Oct 1995 14:16:49 -0500
Received: from mdd.comm.mot.com (mdisea.mdd.comm.mot.com [138.242.64.201]) by pobox.mot.com (8.6.11/8.6.10/MOT-3.8) with SMTP id OAA12327; Sun, 1 Oct 1995 14:16:48 -0500
Received: from bb29c.mdd.comm.mot.com by mdd.comm.mot.com (4.1/SMI-4.1)
	id AA13792; Sun, 1 Oct 95 12:16:46 PDT
Received: by bb29c.mdd.comm.mot.com (4.1/SMI-4.1)
	id AA19695; Sun, 1 Oct 95 12:16:45 PDT
Date: Sun, 1 Oct 1995 12:16:44 -0700 (PDT)
From: Bill Mitchell <mitchell@mdd.comm.mot.com>
X-Sender: mitchell@bb29c
To: debian-bugs@pixar.com
Cc: bruce@pixar.com
Subject: mkboot won't make a boot floppy
Message-Id: <Pine.SUN.3.91.951001115132.19638C-100000@bb29c>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII


PACKAGE:  miscutils
VERSION:  1.3-2

Several problems.  Some major.  Some have been reported previously.

1.  mkboot won't make a boot disk on 0.93r6.  It tries to
    dd /boot/vmlinuz to the floppy, and that file does not exist
    in 0.93r6.

2.  It looks like it'd likely make an unusable boot disk after a
    kernel rebuild.  It presumes that the hard drive kernel image
    is rdev'd correctly.  Are we sure that a kernel rebuild will
    produce a properly rdev'd image?  Lilo doesn't have a problem
    with improperly rdev'd images, but they won't work if copied
    to a floppy.

3.  The "Do you want to make the system bootable now?" prompt is
    badly worded, IMHO.  It follows a message saying that the
    user must either make a bootable floppy diskette or re-run
    LILO.  It's not really clear that answering this question
    "y" won't re-run LILO.  As it happens, I dodn't want to
    run LILO when I ran mkboot, and didn't feel good about answering
    'y" to this question.

4.  It says "In order to use the new kernel image you have just
    installed ...".  This doesn't belong in mkboot.  Some users
    will run it just to make a boot floppy on a system which has
    not recently had a new kernel image installed.  I think this
    stuff comes from mkboot being invoked from the image package
    postinst, but the "new kernel image" stuff belongs in the
    image package postinst, not in mkboot.

mitchell@mdd.comm.mot.com (Bill Mitchell)