What Boot Floppy?

[JohnT]

Why is it that 9 out of 10 people that come to this board asking for help, never make a boot floppy during install? The install even prompts you to. This fact makes it very difficult to help sometimes. Then there's the guy that has no floppy drive. What the hell is that all about? You've just reduced your boot options by a third. This has not as much to do with Linux as it does to plain old common sense. Do we throw that out the window with logic too.:confused: <end mild rant>

[Dun'kalis]

I use my old SuSE disks to boot. Still haven't made a boot floppy!

PS: Knoppix is a fine boot disk, I want one.

[JohnT]

I can't remember you mangling an install , lately, either, or can I?:D

[Dun'kalis]

I made my machine unbootable a month or two ago.

That count?

<overzealous preacher>SuSE saved me!</overzealous preacher>

Gentoo is still better, though.

[emetib]

glad i had mine the other day. messed up the root password and couldn't get su in. really sucked for a little while. good thing i read that someone else (newbie) had that problem. or i would have had to reinstall.

oh no, lions, and tigers, and bears, oh my.

[2damncommon]

I guess the truth is that if you think about it, making a boot floppy is a lot easier than a reinstall....

[slapNUT]

Personally I don't make bootdisks because I know how to use "Rescue Mode" and that is much quicker to boot the cd into rescue mode than to boot a rescue floppy. Of course rescue mode can be tricky, so you should use bootdisks if available.

[Can O' Beans]

Floppy drive?

I haven't used one of those in years. They're ancient (in PC "time") and I have no use for them. No drive, more room in case, less cables, etc...

I can boot from a disc in my DVD drive if absolutely necessary.

[JohnT]

Some of you are missing the point. If a newbie makes a bootdisk he knows to use it. There's not three pages of telling him how to set his bios, how to boot with cd not to mention the ones with a fubared cdrom drive. I'm not talking about people that know how. They don't need the help.

[Can O' Beans]

But I don't know how.. yet. :D

But I guess I'm different from most newbies in that I'll at least try to read read/search first before posting.

[bs_texas]

Dell asks, "what boot floppy?"

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/02/07/dell.floppydisks.reut/index.html

[sharth]

smart boot manager floppy
tom's root disk floppy debian install rescue cds.
knoppix live cd
gentoo unreal 2k3 demo live cd.

But no ACTUAL boot disk :D

[2damncommon]

I saw the story about Dell phasing out floppy drives shortly after JohnT posted his mild rant.
Unfortunately the usual reasons to abandon floppies due to their small capicity misses the point. Since originally personal computers ran from floppies (2 5.25 disk drives, WOW!) it was almost always a failsafe way to access the computer. Both Linux and DOS have tools and utilities for accessing and booting the hard disk from floppy. As far as I am concerned, CDs do not completely replace the utility of a floppy. I have seen a nice Dell computer of recent vintage that came with both a DVD and CD. It is somehow set up so that it only boots from floppy. No changes in the BIOS make the CD or DVD bootable. I suspect the drives are not in the correct positions and this somehow prevents bootup.
Not everyone has CD burners. What would you guess? 50% maybe?
Computers need a cheap, simple, standard way to boot in an emergency.
If you are moving a short document from 1 computer to another, a floppy is still the easiest way to do it. No longer, I guess. The other computer MUST support the type of CD you burn or the USB devices you prefer. Another reason for everyone to ignore any computer older than a few years.

[JohnT]

As long as I can get one, I'll always have a floppy-drive.

[2damncommon]

As long as I can get one, I'll always have a floppy-drive.
Me too.
I even have a 5.25 on one PC to fool with.

[Lorithar]

Boot Floppy ... hmmm .. .yup got one o' those ...

What do I do? ...
I keep at LEAST one good working kernel on the disk (even when I'm playing on the bleeeeeeding edge with kernels) and I keep one system image on CD. -- generally matching the one good working kernel. The floppy can't mount my filesystems, but I can get to the cd from it .. and get the bits and pieces from there... wouldn't want to explain it to a newbie though...

[sharth]

Originally posted by 2damncommon
Me too.
I even have a 5.25 on one PC to fool with. i have one in my cabinet from my old 486.