Creating a Boot Diskette

If you're doing a Custom installation, the Bootdisk dialog ( Figure 9-39 ) gives you the opportunity to create a customized boot diskette for your Red Hat Linux system.

A boot diskette can be handy in these situations:

• Use It Instead of LILO -- You can use a boot diskette instead of LILO. This is handy if you're trying Red Hat Linux for the first time, and you'd feel more comfortable if the boot process for your other operating system is left unchanged. With a boot diskette, going back to your other operating system is as easy as removing the boot diskette and rebooting.

• Use It When Another Operating System Overwrites LILO -- Other operating systems may not be as flexible as Red Hat Linux when it comes to supported boot methods. Quite often, installing or updating another operating system can cause the master boot record (originally containing LILO) to be overwritten, making it impossible to boot your Red Hat Linux installation. The boot diskette can then be used to boot Red Hat Linux so you can reinstall LILO.

Select Yes and press Space to create a boot diskette. If you do this, you'll be prompted to insert a diskette in the last step of the installation procedure ( the section called Finishing Up ).

For instructions on how to create a boot diskette after the installation, read the mkbootdisk man page. Be sure you create a new boot diskette if you make any changes to your kernel.