[cobalt-users] Linux Bootable floppy for recovery

["Michael Aronoff" <ma@xxxxxxxx>]

I had the dreaded bad update problem today but mine seemed to be worse than
some.  Cobalt took me through the steps and we could not get into to fix the
/dev/null no matter what we did.  They asked if I had another Linux machine
I could put the drive in so I could we could try to fix it that way.  I did
not though so they told me "use the restore disk"  ARGHHHH!

I can understand having to do this if it is my fault or a hardware problem
but it was neither, it was Cobalt's fault!!

So never wanting to say die, I thought to myself hey if I had a Linux boot
floppy I could move the HD into my PC and fix it that way.  Well after about
3 min on the next I found Pocket Linux as a .bin file  I would write to a
floppy with winimage from windows (http://pocket-linux.coven.vmh.net/) and I
was off.  I had a hard time getting the Cobalt drive mounted as I had never
used the mount command before (OK I am still a newbie in some areas) but I
eventually got it mounted fixed the null file and had my Raq3 back up in
about 45 min.

This got me thinking.  Maybe someone could make a similar floppy from the
same version of Linux that cobalt uses and even have it auto mount the HD.

Any expert out there think this is a good idea?  Even better would be if the
Cobalt Motherboard supported bootable floppy on the USB port.  We could
making fixing these things a breeze and the need for a full restore much
rarer.

Just an idea.

Michael Aronoff Out
Calabasas, CA
ma@xxxxxxxx