EMILE/README.floppy

This file explains how to install EMILE to boot from a floppy

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How to Create a floppy from rescue disk image
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You can find floppy image from the package emile-rescue

Under linux, the command to dump image to floppy is:

	# dd if=emile-rescue-x.y.bin of=/dev/fd0 bs=512 conv=sync

then, you can eject floppy with:

	# eject /dev/fd0
	

If you are using MacOS, use MakeDebianFloppy AppleScript
(you must use a floppy image with a size of exactly 1474560 bytes).
If you are neither using linux, nor MacOS, please refer to rawrite page

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How to Change the kernel boot arguments
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The command to set kernel boot arguments is emile-set-cmdline:

        emile-set-cmdline <image> <cmdline>
        

    * <image> is the floppy image or a device file (/dev/fd0) to set
    * <cmdline> is new kernel boot arguments

For instance, to set root filesystem on disk 1 partition 4

 	# emile-set-cmdline floppy.img "root=/dev/sda4"
        

To set root filesystem on ramdisk

 	# emile-set-cmdline floppy.img "root=/dev/ramdisk ramdisk_size=2048"
 	

To set root filesystem on NFS

 	# emile-set-cmdline floppy.img \

	"root=/dev/nfs ip=dhcp nfsroot=192.168.100.1:/tftboot/192.168.100.51/"
	

You can also read current boot arguments from floppy:

	# emile-set-cmdline -r /dev/fd0
	Current command line: "root=/dev/ramdisk ramdisk_size=2048"
	
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How to Create your floppy image with your kernel
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First of all, you must "flatten" the kernel object:

	# objcopy -I elf32-big -O binary -R .note -R .comment -S vmlinux vmlinux.bin
	

To allocate correct buffer size during uncompress, EMILE needs to know the size of flattened kernel:

	# ls -l vmlinux.bin
	-rwxr-xr-x    1 m68k     users     1290240 2004-06-09 22:41 vmlinux.bin
	

You can now compress kernel with gzip (bzip2 is not supported by EMILE):

	# gzip -9 vmlinux.bin
	

You can copy first and second level bootloader and kernel to floppy:

	# emile-install -f first -s second -i vmlinux.bin.gz -b 1290240 /dev/fd0
	

And finally, you can set kernel boot arguments:

	# emile-set-cmdline /dev/fd0 "root=/dev/sda4"
	

If you have a ramdisk, the two last steps become:

	# emile-install -f first -s second -i vmlinux.bin.gz -b 1290240 -r ramdisk.gz /dev/fd0
	# emile-set-cmdline /dev/fd0 "root=/dev/ramdisk ramdisk_size=2048"
	
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Laurent Vivier <Laurent@lvivier.info>