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<H1><A NAME="SECTION00760000000000000000">Emergency boot floppies</A></H1>
<P>
It is not always possible to boot a computer from the hard disk.
For example, if you make a mistake in configuring LILO, you might
make your system unbootable. For these situations, you need an
alternative way of booting that will always work (as long as the
hardware works). For typical PC's, this means booting from the
floppy drive.
<A NAME="2091"> </A>
<A NAME="2092"> </A>
<P>
Most Linux distributions allow one to create an <b>emergency
boot floppy</b> during installation. It is a good idea to do this.
However, some such boot disks contain only the kernel, and assume
you will be using the programs on the distribution's installation
disks to fix whatever problem you have. Sometimes those programs
aren't enough; for example, you might have to restore some files
from backups made with software not on the installation disks.
<A NAME="2094"> </A>
<A NAME="2095"> </A>
<A NAME="2096"> </A>
<P>
Thus, it might be necessary to create a custom root floppy as well.
The <em>Bootdisk HOWTO</em> by Graham Chapman ([<A HREF="node113.html#bootdisk-howto">Cha</A>])
contains instructions for doing this.
You must, of course, remember to keep your emergency boot
and root floppies up to date.
<A NAME="2099"> </A>
<P>
You can't use the floppy drive you use to mount the root floppy
for anything else. This can be inconvenient if you only have one
floppy drive. However, if you have enough memory, you
can configure your boot floppy to load the root
disk to a ramdisk (the boot floppy's kernel needs to be specially
configured for this).
Once the root floppy has been loaded into the ramdisk, the
floppy drive is free to mount other disks.
<A NAME="2100"> </A>
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<P><ADDRESS>
<I>Lars Wirzenius <BR>
Sat Nov 15 02:32:11 EET 1997</I>
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