************************************************************
940822:

The reason why we had problems mounting the bootdisk (in step 6)
was that the floppy was write protected, and we were trying to mount it 
as read-write.

Hence, we got the "mount: block device /dev/sr0 is not permitted on its 
filesystem" error message.

We should have done

mount -rt minix /dev/fd0 /mnt

instead of

mount -t minix /dev/fd0 /mnt

Once we figured out that the read-only flag was necessary on
read-only devices, we were able to mount an iso9660 CD-ROM.

************************************************************
940825:

Kernel can be found at: ftp.cpsc.ucalgary.ca:/pub/systems/linux/aha274x
   Bootdisk uses: aha274x-pre-alpha-4.tar

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940826:

HOW TO BUILD A BOOTDISK FOR SLACKWARE:

Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.help
Subject: Re: Adaptec 2742T bootdisk
Summary: 
Expires: 
References: <jpg.777753338@sage.cc.purdue.edu>
Sender: 
Followup-To: 
Distribution: 
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Keywords: Adaptec EISA 2742T
Cc: gurganus@ecn.purdue.edu henryc@eecs.berkeley.edu

In article <jpg.777753338@sage.cc.purdue.edu>,
J Gurganus <jpg@sage.cc.purdue.edu> wrote:
>Anyway, does anybody have any suggestions?  I haven't been having much
>luck making a bootdisk on another machine.  I can compile the kernel,
>but my bootdisk attempts don't boot. =)
>
>If someone could send me some friendly step-by-step instructions on
>making a slackware bootdisk with a custom kernel, I'd greatly appreciate
>it.  I tried following the instructions in the slackware distribution, but
>I'm still doing something wrong.  I'm not a UNIX newbie, but I'm not
>a kernel-programmer either. 8)

Recently, I built a slackware "compatible" bootdisk with the Adaptec 274x/284x 
patches (ftp@ftp.cpsc.ucalgary.ca:/pub/systems/linux/aha274x
/aha274x-pre-alpha-4.tar.gz) on Linux 1.1.35.  We were able to install 
linux including X on a 486 box with an Adaptec 284x card.  It can be found 
at ftp@ic.eecs.berkeley.edu:/pub/linux.

Step-by-step instructions on how I built the bootdisk:

(1) Patched linux 1.1.35 with the aha274x-pre-alpha-4 patches according to
    their instructions.
(2) To make it so that the kernel will prompt you for a "rootdisk" as in
    the slackware distribution, I had to modify drivers/block/ramdisk.c in
    the kernel.  I made two additions:
    (a) Right before the line "static void do_rd_request(void)", I added
        extern void wait_for_keypress(void);
    (b) In the routine: "static void do_load(void)", right after the
        variable declarations, I added:

        if (!rd_length) return;
        /* Pat's ugly hack */
        printk("\n\nPlease remove the boot kernel disk from your floppy drive, insert a\n");
        printk("root/install disk (such as one of the Slackware color144, colrlite,\n");
        printk("tty144, or tty12 disks) or some other disk you wish to load into a\n");
        printk("ramdisk and boot, and then press ENTER to continue.\n\n");
        wait_for_keypress();

        printk("RAMDISK: %d bytes, starting at 0x%x\n",
                                        rd_length, (int) rd_start);

        which I obtained from the slackware source.
    The reason why I just haven't given you the patch, is that this might
    be different depending on which version of the kernel you grab.
(3) Compile the kernel on a working linux box:
    -> make config; make clean; make dep; make zImage
(2) Change some of the bootflags on zImage:
    -> rdev zImage /dev/fd0  (location of bootable Linux kernel image)
    -> rdev -r zImage 1440   (create a 1.44MB RAMDISK on bootup)
    -> rdev -R zImage 0      (mount root as read/write, normally 1 on HD)
    -> rdev -v zImage -1     (set the video mode to Normal VGA)
(3) Mount a Slackware 2.0.0 bootdisk (I used scsi.gz) and replace the
    kernel that is on that disk.
    -> mount -t minix /dev/fd0 /mnt
    -> cp zImage /mnt/vmlinuz
(4) Run lilo on the bootdisk (be sure it's a fairly recent version of lilo.
    The one I used was from Slackware 1.1.2 and that was fine.)
    -> cd /mnt
    -> lilo -r /mnt
(5) Boot the disk, and you should be all set.

-- 
Henry Chang				         henryc@eecs.Berkeley.EDU
UC Berkeley Graduate Student                                 Berkeley, CA
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