Selecting 2.4 Kernel on Boot Floppy Debian Install

[Brian Kelsay]

> Is it possible to use the "boot.bat" batch file on the CD with a 
> Win98 rescue disk?  The laptop does not currently have a FAT 
> partition and I don't plan on having one in it.  The drive is only 
> 2GB so it isn't practical to create a DOS partition just to use 
> loadlin.

Well that was an exercise in futility.  BOOT.BAT wasn't written very
well, so instead of giving a menu to choose from it just shows the menu
then boots straight into the first kernel.

I looked into the BOOT.BAT file and typed out the command it uses to load
the bf2.4 kernel.  It didn't buy the deception and halted the system.  It
said something like "wrong kernel for system", when Slackware 9.0 loaded
just fine and used the 2.4.2.22 kernel.

So it appears I won't be joining the ranks of the Debian folks on the
laptop at any rate.
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Can you edit the .bat file and put some wait time in there?  You could possibly put your Win98 
stuff on a CDRW and add the loadlin stuff and your edited boot.bat.  you may have to put all this 
together on HDD somewhere and then put on a CDR as most old CDRom drives I have messed w/ did not 
support CDRW.  It's not always easy to put together a bootable CD from scratch, but there are tools 
that do this for you under Linux and Windows.   Since I have to use Windows at work I found a tool 
called WinISO for editing and building new ISO images, I then burn w/ Nero.

Have you tried a NFS install?  You should be able to get a Linux boot disk w/network and NFS 
support and put your net card module on another floppy.  you put your CD or the files from it on 
another PC running NFS or possibly a samba share.  Debian has instructions for this as do other 
distros.

Brian Kelsay