[Techtalk] How to create a live boot CD containing your favorite Linux Distro

[Bud]

Hi Ashleigh,

 Thanks for the suggestions. I will include them in the article when I get 
some time. I didnt reliaze people might wanna try this on old machines that 
didnt support bootable CD roms.

 To boot off a floppy (instead of the CDROM) you could try these out although 
I havent really tested them with LiveCD

1) boot off the custom kernel (which we build) and issue a 

syslinux -s /dev/fd0

2) On RH/Mandrake
$uname -r
 vmlinuz-2.4.19-16mdklivecd
$ mkbootdisk --device /dev/fd0 vmlinuz-2.4.19-16mdklivecd
 
 Once you have a bootable floppy that works you can always copy that floppy as 
an image (using dd) and included in the LIVECD along with instructions to 
create the bootable floppy (using dd or rawrite)

# dd if=/dev/fd0 of=/root/livecd.img bs=512 count=2880

Bud

On Tuesday 12 August 2003 4:18 pm, perimorph wrote:
> hi bud -- thanks for the how-to.  :)  i always wondered how one would go
> about doing that since someone gave me a mandrake 8 bootable cd a while
> back.  i'll try following your directions when i have some time and let
> you know how it works out for me.
>
> as for your "motivation - why?" section, you might add that it's a nice
> way to try out other distros without committing to them.  i started with
> redhat and i'm happy with it, so i don't have any desire to erase
> everything just on a whim..  but still, i'd like to try out debian and
> some others just to see what they're like.
>
> one thing i didn't see while i was skimming your how-to but i'd like to
> know..  it would occasionally be useful to use one of these cd's on an
> old computer that can't boot from the cd-rom drive.  how would it be
> possible to make a floppy disk that can load the cd?  (my apologies if
> you covered that and i missed it, i'm kinda sleep-deprived.)
>
> --ashleigh
>
> >  This is a small project I've been working on the last couple of weeks
> > with some success. So I thought I'd share my experience and finally got
> > around to writing a How-To.
> >
> > http://www.babytux.org/articles/howto/how2livecd.php
> >
> > I'd appreciate any feedback. May be some of you will be able to try this
> > out independently and improve on it :)
>
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