Boost Your Penguin Power

Got Boot Disk?

To start, you'll need to log on as the root user on your computer. (You assigned yourself a root user password when you installed the operating system.) And you'll need to be in a command shell to follow the steps in this article. If your copy of Linux boots up to a text console, you're ready to roll. If you boot to an X Windows session, you'll need to open a terminal window (on the default Red Hat GNOME desktop, click the button on the taskbar that looks like a computer).

If you followed the instructions in "Get Started With Linux," you created an emergency boot disk. Good for you! Should something go wrong, you'll need this floppy to resurrect your computer.

If you didn't create that disk, then make one now. To do so in Red Hat 5.x or 6.x, first type more /etc/lilo.conf on the command line and press Enter. The contents of the LInux LOader, or LILO, configuration file will scroll by, a page at a time. You're looking for a line that looks like this: image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.2.12-20

This is the path for your current Linux kernel, the one that loads whenever you start this operating system. Note the version number of the kernel (everything after "vmlinuz-")--you'll need this in a second. If you don't have a command line prompt back, hit q to stop viewing the lilo.conf file. Now type the following:

mkbootdisk --verbose --device /dev/fd0 2.212-20

Replace the version number in this command with the one you discovered in lilo.conf. Linux will ask you to insert the floppy disk and press Enter to continue. You'll have a new boot disk in a few seconds. (If any errors crop up during the creation of the disk, toss out the floppy you inserted and try again with another.) Now set this boot disk aside--you may need it later.