using rawwrite

[Scorcher2005]

is the raw write that comes withh ALL boot disks used to unzip the zipped files and move them to floppy or just to unzip them or just to move them to floppy.  plz explain how i do this, i am a bit(a lot) of a newb to boot disks.

[voidmain]

rawrite does not unzip a floppy image. If the image is zipped or compressed in any other way it will first need to be unzipped. The file that you will rawrite to disk should be exactly the same size as a floppy disk (1.44MB).  This is because a floppy image is a straight sector by sector image of a floppy disk. rawrite just copies those sectors back to disk from the image file. rawrite does the same thing as "dd if=floppy.img of=/dev/fd0" under UNIX.

[jtpenrod]

Rawrite is used to prepare file images and write them to a diskette in a form that can be moved directly into memory with no intervening soft to intrepret the data. Just select the image you need from either the CD or download it off the 'Net. The program is necessary only if you have just Winders. If you also have Linux, then just use dd to prepare your bootable diskettes.

Of course, this assumes that you have a system that can't boot up directly from the CD itself. The vast majority of newer systems can boot directly from a CD, whereas some older systems couldn't. (I had a Dell OptiPlex GSa, circa 1996, that couldn't boot from CDs, thus I had to use rawrite to prepare bootable diskettes to do a Mandrake install) Newer systems probably won't require it at all.
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[Scorcher2005]

so rawwrite just moves the unzipped file to floppy?  thats what i thought at 1st.  it asks for file name so i put it in and it said no such file or directory.  i have tried it with just the file name and the whole directory path and neither work, it just says no such file or directory.  what do i do?

[voidmain]

If I remember right rawrite is a little flaky.  Probably the sure fire way of making it work is to create a directory on your C: drive, then copy your disk images and rawrite.exe into that directory. Change into that directory and type "rawrite". It should ask you for the drive letter of your floppy where you just put in "A" or "B" depending on what drive letter your floppy is.  Then type in the full filename of the image you want to write "boot.bin" for instance, followed by <ENTER>.

[voidmain]

And if you have trouble with the DOS version here's a Windows version:

http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/rawwrite.htm

[Calum]

so, what about if somebody had, say, a floppy image of size 1.44 Mb called something.bin and it's a one floppy distro of an operating system, and they wanted instead of putting it on a floppy (for booting off of) to put the bootable image on  a CD or a hard drive partition?

this isn't a rawrite question, i know, but just interested in how to do this, and it is related... could one just create the bootable floppy, then copy the files?

[voidmain]

If you wanted the bootable image of a floppy on a hard drive partition you could create a small partition and "dd" it to that partition just like you would to the floppy. Say you create a 2MB /dev/hda2. You would "dd if=floppy.img of=/dev/hda2" which you could then set partition 2 active and boot it just as if you were booting from floppy.  Now if you just want to copy the files from the image you can either dd the image to floppy, mount it and copy the files, or just mount the image file itself:

mount floppy.img /mnt -o loop

Then "cd /mnt" and there's your floppy filesystem.

And if you wanted it to be a bootable 1.44MB CD (what a waste of space) just use "cdrecord" or "xcdroast" just like you would with any *.ISO image. I believe that would work, haven't actually tried it. It wouldn't be an iso9660 file system so it may not work. But I do know for sure that the hard drive trick will work because I've done it on a system that I only had a network card on and no floppy or CD (and an already running Linux partition where I downloaded the bootnet disk image and wrote it to a spare partition, then booted from that partition and did a network upgrade/install).

[ May 09, 2002: Message edited by: VoidMain ]

[Calum]

x11, that sounds fab! does it run directly off the CD with no need to install? if so, can i get a copy?  

thanks a lot for that VoidMain, i never would have expected it to be so simple! cdrecord doesn't support my USB CDwriter though, but that's not what i want really, i just want to put PicoBSD on my hard drive. I also have Trinux which i want to put there, it's in 3 different floppy.img type files, and comes with a DOS .bat file to write them to floppy, now that i know about dd though, i will go and have a shot.

[Scorcher2005]

Thanks for that Windows version of Rawwrite Voidmain.  It worked!  Now i cant seem to get the bootdisk to work!!!

[voidmain]

Alex, what boot disk is it that you are trying to get to work?  And what exactly are you trying to do that isn't working?

[Scorcher2005]

i am trying to use the boot disk from the folling site:
http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/bootdisk.html

when it starts up it says boot:
and i press enter
it then asks to probe for scsi drivers i i type y and hit enter
it then goes and detects all the scsi drivers and asks which password i want to change.  It already says administrator by default so i press enter
it then asks what to change the password to.  I type a password and press enter.
it then says the encrypted code for the password and asks to change more passwords or press ! to quit
i then press ! and it says write back shell y/n
i have tried doing y and n
after typing either y or n it says some info like "now restart comp after removing floppy by pressing ctrl + alt + del, but that doesnt work so i just turn off the comp with the button.

so do you see any flaws in my execution of this disk.  If you have WinNT and test it out it would be GREATLY appreciated!!  If it works for you just reply with EXACTLY what you did in "noob" language.

thanks,
-Alex

[voidmain]

I already told you that I tried the same boot disk and it worked for me on Win2000 Pro with NTFS.  I did the same thing you did except I don't remember having to press '!', doesn't mean it's not there.  Do you actually have a SCSI drive or an IDE drive?  I have IDE so I pressed "n" to not probe for SCSI devices.

And is your machine a member of a domain or is it a stand-alone computer?  Remember, this only changes the LOCAL Administrator password. So make sure you have the local computer's name in the DOMAIN box when you try and log in with the new password. It will not change the domain wide Administrator password unless of course you are running the disk on the PDC (Primary Domain Controller).

[ May 11, 2002: Message edited by: VoidMain ]

[Scorcher2005]

quote:Originally posted by VoidMain:
 Do you actually have a SCSI drive or an IDE drive?  I have IDE so I pressed "n" to not probe for SCSI devices.
[ May 11, 2002: Message edited by: VoidMain ]

What is a SCSI drive or an IDE drive.  
And also, the computer is on a domain(LAN).  So what can I do to change the domain administrator password?

[voidmain]

If you don't know what SCSI and IDE are than you probably have IDE disk drives. Answer "no" to the load SCSI drivers. And being on a LAN does not mean your machine is part of a DOMAIN.  The only way to change the DOMAIN Administrator password using that disk would be to change it on the computer acting as the Primary Domain controller (that would be the one in your computer room that you do not have access to, and more than likely *does* have SCSI drives).