Network driver floppy

[dsavage at peaknet.net]

On Thu, 2004-03-18 at 20:21, David Liguori wrote:
> I at first tried installing FC1 from a separate box nfs-exporting the
> mounted ISO's.  I've successfully done network installs of other
> distros.  Unfortunately, I couldn't make a readable floppy of
> drvnet.img, using either rawrite or dd, using 3 different dos and/or
> Linux machines.  I tried re-downloading the file from different
> mirrors.  Then I tried the file from my RH9 CD's.  The result was always
> the same: unreadable disk.
>
> Due to bios issues I am unable to boot from CD, even though my system
> supposedly supports it.  It occurs to me the drvnet.img file has always
> been bad and I am the only person on the planet who has tried to use
> it.  Has anyone had success with it?  (I ended up burning the ISO's and
> installing from CD, but I'd like to try a net install next go-round).

David,

NFS installations have worked well for me in the past. The only "gotcha" I
know of is to be sure to append a / to the end of your NFS drive spec.

Some basic things to check:
$ md5sum yarrow-i386-disc1.iso
76ef22495d186580e47efd8d7a65fe6b  yarrow-i386-disc1.iso
If you get a different answer, either rsync to repair it or download a
replacement iso file. Then as root:
# mount /path-to/yarrow-i386-disc1.iso /mnt -t iso9660 -o loop
# md5sum /mnt/images/drvnet.img
d0ab7a6028aa0992ec641d429c2d036b  /mnt/images/drvnet.img
If and only if both of these md5sums are correct:
# dd if=/mnt/images/drvnet.img of=/dev/fd0 bs=2048
720+0 records in
720+0 records out
# umount /mnt

If you can't boot from this floppy disk, you may have a bad floppy disk
drive. Check the ribbon cable and its connectors first. If they're OK,
remove & replace the drive. They're cheap and relatively easy to find.

Hope this helps....

--Doc Savage
  Fairview Heights, IL