bootdisk problems

[Bogle, David (SAIC)]

Hi there everyone!

I have a 20GB Samsung IDE harddrive on which resides RedHat Linux 7.3
running the 2.4.18-5 kernel. This is the only harddrive i have in my system.

The geometry of the drive at present is as follows:

Disk /dev/hda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 2481 cylinders 
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes 

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System 
/dev/hda1 * 1 6 48163+ 83 Linux 
/dev/hda2 7 2416 19358325 83 Linux 
/dev/hda3 2417 2481 522112+ 82 Linux swap 

I would like to resize my / partition /dev/hda2 in order to install a FAT32
partition for a small install of Windows.

My problem is that i can't seem to get the bootdisks working. I have ftp'the
partboot.img and the partroot.img files from the ftp site supplied on the
web page http://www.gnu.org/software/parted/

The README file tells me to simply cp partroot.img /dev/fd0 ; when i try
this my OS asks if i want to overwrite /dev/fd0. I say yes and then try and
mount the floppy mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy and there is nothing on it.

Should these files simple be copied or should they be dd, i.e. dd
if=partroot.img of=/dev/fd0 bs=1440k ?

I have tried both the cp method and the dd method but i still get problems.
I think i have the partboot.img working as i can boot with this and it asks
for another disk, how do i get the partroot.img working?? I have parted
1.6.2 installed on /dev/hda2 (if that's any help).

Do i have to format the floppy or anything before this? I could do with some
help on this!

I am struggling to create bootdisks for my system.. please help.

Also, when i actually get to the stage where i have the machine booted with
the disks, how do i start parted? Is it just a case of parted /dev/hda or do
i have to do something else, i have seen some documentation where i have to
associate parted with an environment variable...

Please help (apologies for any newbieness)

bogler

System:
RedHat7.3 (2.4.18-5)
Samsung IDE 20GB
256MB RAM
1 Floppy drive
VIA bridge