4. The BOOT/ROOT disks / Eltorito bootable CD-Rom

Two disks are provided to allow using partition image from floppy disks. The boot disk was created from a recent kernel. This kernel include the support of many file systems, as ext2fs, vfat, ntfs, and reiserfs. Then it allows to save/read image files on many file systems. The kernel also include many drivers, as the parallel ZIP drive, the SCSI, ... to allow using many medias to read/write the image file. The root disk was created from a slackware root disk. Data space is missing on the root disk, then some commands can be missing. We try to remove debug data from executable binary files with objcopy, and we compress the root disk with gzip -9, but all libraries and commands require many disk space. Since the 0.3.5 version, an eltorito CD-Rom, created from the slackware 7.0 one, is provided. It allows to run partition image from a cdrom, without any installed linux system. It's very easy to have the image files and the binary program on the same CD-Rom now...

4.1 Why theses disks ?

You may need these two floppies to use Partition Image in some cases:

• You want partition image to work on your only linux root partition and then you cannot run partition image from the system which uses this partition to work.
• You don't have any linux system installed on your computer and you want to run partition image
• You don't want to compile Partition Image

4.2 How to create these disks ?

When you have downloaded the two files (boot disk image and root disk image), you will use them to create the floppies disks. You need two 1,44 MB floppies.

Under Linux:

• insert the boot disk
• type: dd if=partimage-x.y.z-bootdisk-w.raw of=/dev/fd0
• insert the root disk
• type: dd if=partimage-x.y.z-rootdisk-w.raw of=/dev/fd0

Under DOS/Windows: You need to download RAWRITE.EXE, which wan be found on Partition Image home page.(14 KB)

• insert the boot disk
• type: rawrite -f partimage-x.y.z-bootdisk-w.raw -d a:
• insert the root disk
• type: rawrite -f partimage-x.y.z-rootdisk-w.raw -d a:

4.3 How to use these disks ?

First, you must insert the boot disk, and power on your computer. Wait a few minutes. When you see the message "VFS: Insert root floppy disk to be loaded into RAM disk and press ENTER", insert the root disk and press enter. Instructions will explain you what to do to continue.

4.4 How to create an eltorito bootable CD-Rom ?

This section will help you to create a bootable CD-Rom, from the image file provided on partimage web site. Then, you just have to start your computer on this CD-Rom to able to run Partition Image, and to save/restore partitions. You won't need to have a linux system installed on your computer, or to use floppy disks to use partimage.

You will need to download the file partimage-x.y.z-bootcd-w.img first. (2.88 MB)

1) Create your main burning directory: for example "CDBurning".

2) Go in your main burning directory, and create a sub-directory named ".eltorito", and copy the 2.88 MB image file in this directory.

3) Copy all the other files in the main "CDBurning" directory. For example, your can copy all your image files. You can put 650 MB files here.

4) Now, create the ISO image with "mkisofs" Go in your main burning directory, with a console. Type the following command: mkisofs -o /tmp/cd-rescue.iso -R -V "Partition Image rescue" -v -J -T -d -D -b .eltorito/partimage-x.y.z-bootcd-w.img -c .eltorito/eltorito.boot -A "Partition Image" .

Don't forget the final point "." and update the file name with the name of the current version.

/tmp/cd-rescue.iso is the image file to create. You must have 700 MB of free space to create this file. Then, if you don't have enough space on your root directory, please choose another temp path.

mkisofs will create a 650 MB image file (or smaller if you don't have a full CD), it can take time it's around 15 minutes usually.

5) It's time to burn your CD. You can use "cdrecord in console mode", or another GUI, as gCombust.

6) Your bootable CD-Rom must be ready.

You can also burn the bootable CD-Rom with Nero under Windows. That's very easy: You just have to choose the image file, and select that's a 2.88 MB floppy disk.