devnull@adc.idt.com asks
[...]
> Has anyone made Boot floppies(ontap) on Solaris/Linux.
On Solaris ... often. (Well, not so often as I used to, as it's _so_
tedious to do a real floppy boot to test the results these days. But
I try to make a new floppy set at least for each n.n release - e.g.
6.0, 6.1, 6.2)
> I dont know how to fit more than 1.45 Mb on a 3.5" floppy.
If you did, the filer wouldn't know how to read them!
> Ontap uses 4 disks to boot.
It's up to 5 now.
> 3 are of size 1.47M and one of size 0.76M.
>
> Any help is appreciated.
Well, suppose you have a Solaris system with a floppy drive attached,
and assume the volume manager is running.
You will have the NNN_boot_floppy_M.X files (NNN = ONTAP release,
M = 1 to 5, X = i or a) downloaded from now.netapp.com and have
verified their checksums.
Insert a new or reusable floppy in the drive. Use "volcheck" to make
the volume manager notice it. If necesary, low-level format it using
the "fdformat" command.
Now do "dd if=NNN_boot_floppy_M.X of=/vol/dev/diskette0/unlabelled bs=18k".
If you have multiple floppy drives it might not be diskette0. It might
not be called "unlabelled" if you are re-using an old floppy: I tend
to use filename completion in the shell at that point. :-) The block
size doesn't matter all that much: the copying will be pretty slow
regardless. DO NOT USE "rdiskette0" instead of "diskette0", though:
that will change the low-level formatting and you'll have to start over.
Now use "eject" to get your floppy disk out. Fill in the pretty coloured
label. Now repeat the process for the remaining floppies ... :-(
Now schedule enough downtime on your filer to test what you've
just made. Of course, it helps to have a spare filer (with the
right architecture) at this point!
Chris Thompson
Email: cet1@cam.ac.uk
[...]
> Has anyone made Boot floppies(ontap) on Solaris/Linux.
On Solaris ... often. (Well, not so often as I used to, as it's _so_
tedious to do a real floppy boot to test the results these days. But
I try to make a new floppy set at least for each n.n release - e.g.
6.0, 6.1, 6.2)
> I dont know how to fit more than 1.45 Mb on a 3.5" floppy.
If you did, the filer wouldn't know how to read them!
> Ontap uses 4 disks to boot.
It's up to 5 now.
> 3 are of size 1.47M and one of size 0.76M.
>
> Any help is appreciated.
Well, suppose you have a Solaris system with a floppy drive attached,
and assume the volume manager is running.
You will have the NNN_boot_floppy_M.X files (NNN = ONTAP release,
M = 1 to 5, X = i or a) downloaded from now.netapp.com and have
verified their checksums.
Insert a new or reusable floppy in the drive. Use "volcheck" to make
the volume manager notice it. If necesary, low-level format it using
the "fdformat" command.
Now do "dd if=NNN_boot_floppy_M.X of=/vol/dev/diskette0/unlabelled bs=18k".
If you have multiple floppy drives it might not be diskette0. It might
not be called "unlabelled" if you are re-using an old floppy: I tend
to use filename completion in the shell at that point. :-) The block
size doesn't matter all that much: the copying will be pretty slow
regardless. DO NOT USE "rdiskette0" instead of "diskette0", though:
that will change the low-level formatting and you'll have to start over.
Now use "eject" to get your floppy disk out. Fill in the pretty coloured
label. Now repeat the process for the remaining floppies ... :-(
Now schedule enough downtime on your filer to test what you've
just made. Of course, it helps to have a spare filer (with the
right architecture) at this point!
Chris Thompson
Email: cet1@cam.ac.uk