Recipe 10.11. Creating a Boot Disk on Debian

10.11.1 Problem

You forgot to create a boot diskette when you installed your Linux system, and now you want to make one. You know how to create a GRUB or LILO boot diskette, and you know that you can download and burn a nice Knoppix disk for free. But all you really want is a nice little generic boot diskette for your Debian system.

10.11.2 Solution

Use the mkboot utility and a new, blank diskette. The default is to create a bootdisk using vmlinuz and the current root partition:

$ mkboot

You may specify a kernel:

$ mkboot vmlinuz-2.4.21

Or a different root partition and kernel:

$ mkboot /dev/hda2 vmlinuz-2.4.21

If your floppy drive has a non-standard location, use the -d flag to tell mkboot where it is:

$ mkboot -d /dev/fd1

10.11.3 Discussion

mkboot is part of the debianutils package.

Remember to write-protect your diskette by moving the little slide up, so that the slide is open. Always test boot disks before putting them away, and be sure to keep it with the system it was created on.

10.11.4 See Also

• mkboot(8)