GNU/Linux User's Group NIT Hamirpur

What is GNU?

In the words of Richard M. Stallman, the founder of the GNU Project:

"GNU, which stands for Gnu's Not Unix, is the name for the complete Unix-compatible software system which I am writing so that I can give it away free to everyone who can use it. Several other volunteers are helping me. Contributions of time, money, programs and equipment are greatly needed."

»»Read GNU Manifesto

Linux and the GNU Project

The version of GNU which is widely used today is more often known as "Linux" and many users are not aware of the extent of its connection with the GNU Project.

Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine's resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in a combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU, with Linux functioning as its kernel.

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Announcements

We are in the process of enriching our bulletin board and tutorial sections. So anyone interested in writing a tutorial, a review, or sharing interesting links, can just type them down and mail copies to Debarshi ( [email protected] ) and me ( [email protected] ), and we will take care of the rest. Make sure you include the text (plain text only), relevant screenshots and other stuff as seperate attachments.

Posted by Arjun Shankar at 14:08 hr 01/04/2006.

Making a Boot Disk for Linux

The first thing that needs to be done before beginning with the installation of Linux is to make a boot disk. The boot disk becomes a necessity especially if the installation ends abruptly in between. In this document I would discuss how to make a boot disk in both Linux and windows system.

Under MS-DOS

Before you make the boot disk, insert the Official Red Hat Linux CD-ROM Disk 1 in your computer.It is assumed that the cdrom drive is labeled as 'D:' . The following commands are used to create the boot disk.

#Go the command prompt using 'start menu>run>cmd'.

#Now go the cdrom drive , use 'd:'.

#Type at the command prompt 'cd dosutils'and press enter.

#once your prompt looks like 'd:\dosutils>' type the command 'rawrite'.

#The message now displayed will be 'Enter disk image source file name' .

#Now type '..\images\boot.img'.

#Again you will be prompted with the following message 'Enter target diskette drive'.

#Now type 'a:'.

#You will now be prompted to enter a formated 'floppy disk'.

Your boot disk is ready for use.

Under Linux

To make a diskette under Linux or any other variant of Linux-Like operating system, you must have permission to write to the device representing the floppy drive (known as '''/dev/fd0H1440''' under Linux). This permission is granted when you log in the system as the super-user '''root'''. Once you have logged as '''root''', insert a blank formatted diskette into the diskette drive of your computer without issuing a mount command on it. Now it’s time to mount the Red Hat Linux CD-ROM on Linux and change to the directory containing the desired image file to create the boot disk. Insert a blank formatted diskette into the diskette drive Insert the Red Hat Linux CD Part 1 into the CD-ROM drive.

#Go the terminal using 'run' in the run type 'konsole'.

#Now mount the cdrom using the command 'mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom'.

#go to the image directory in cdrom using 'cd /mnt/cdrom/images/'.

#Now type the following command 'dd if=boot.img of=/dev/fd0H1440 bs=1440k'.

#The message now displayed will be '1+0 records in 1+0 records out'.

#Now type 'cd /'.

#umount the cdrom using 'umount /mnt/cdrom'.

#label your floppy disk as 'Red Hat Boot Disk'.

Your command prompt/terminal in linux should look like '[[email protected]'computername']', where computername stands for what you have named your linux box.