[LBo] Boot floppy and MBR

[Jisao]

Here is an interesting page on how to make a boot floppy for a system
with the grub bootloader.  It clearly shows what files need to be on the
floppy. 
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/GrubHowto/BootFloppy?highlight=%28floppy%29


Instead of creating the grub directory in two steps:

mkdir /media/*floppy*/boot

mkdir /media/*floppy*/boot/grub

I did it in one:

mkdir /media/floppy/boot/grub -p


Of special interest of me was the step of safekeeping a copy of the MBR
(master boot record)  (Quote from the link above):

« If you want to be extra cautious, you can save a copy of the current
machine's master boot record to a file on the *floppy*. The following
example assumes the master boot record is on device hda; the file
containing the boot record is named boot.mbr.

    *

      dd if=/dev/hda of=/media/*floppy*/boot.mbr bs=512 count=1

To restore it, you would just reverse the parameters of the dd command:

    *

      dd if=/media/*floppy*/boot.mbr of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1»


Just be careful with the mke2fs and dd commands, they can be quite
destructive if used carelessly.

Jisao