HD Install :: booting dsl from dos

Ok. my problem is that i can not make my pc boot from the cd rom drive because of hardware issuses but THE DRIVE DOES WORK and i am able to access the contents of the drive via dos. i am wondering if there is a way to boot dsl from dos. is there anything i can do ?

Download the bootfloppy.img file and use a disk image writer to write this to a floppy disk. You can use the fdimage.exe from FreeBSD to do this

http://mirror.services.wisc.edu/mirrors/freebsd/tools/

Then boot from this floppy (with the DSL CD inside the CD drive, or insert the CD before you type anything or press <Enter> at the DSL boot prompt).

Another way will be to follow the instructions for Loadlin Install, available from the DSL Documentation pages

i am having a really hard time geting fdimage ( or rawrite ) to work. both the prorams and the bootfloppy.img are in the root of my c: drive and i keep getting the error "no such file or directory" it may be because i am putting the line in the wrong form, but i dont think so

could this be because i am runing an XP pc at work and am unable to logg off to dos? or is there something wrong with the way in which i am using fdimage?

rawrite gives me similar errors

I forgot to remind you that DOS-mode programs normally do not accept long filenames. They adhere to the 8.3 format for filenames, i.e. main name should be 8 characters or less, and the extension should be 3 characters or less.

The solution to your problem will be to rename the file "bootfloppy.img" to something like "boot.img" and try again.

So why is "bootfloppy.img" not named to fit the 8.3 limit? Because normally Linux users can write the floppy image file using the "dd" command in Linux, and they do not encounter the same limit.

renaming worked like a charm

thanks mysterious guest!

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