Re: [orca-list] Creating a Ubuntu boot floppy

[Jude DaShiell <jdashiel shellworld net>]

hmmm, you may not need to do that.  When you start your computer up, hold 
down the left shift key for a couple seconds.  Then try hitting the u key 
and hit return and see if ubuntu comes up.  If all of that fails, try 
again but hit the l key.  I don't know what menu selection ubuntu puts in 
by default but so long as you don't touch that w key you should have a 
pretty good chance of starting ubuntu.



On Tue, 27 Nov 2007, Paul Hunt wrote:

> Hello everyone on the list,
>
>
>
> I recently downloaded the Ubuntu 7.10 live CD when I read about Orca and was
> very impressed when it was able to boot my desktop machine which had stopped
> working under Windows (for a change) and was very impressed when it came up
> talking and detected my graphics, sound, network and SATA hard drives and
> everything and was able (after downloading a codec or two) to play all the
> media on my various drives.  Windows needed installing to the hard drive and
> about 5 CD's worth of drivers and other bits of software to manage that feat
> so well done to all involved in the creation of that.  I've had it up to
> here with Windows and JAWS which seem to be getting less stable with each
> new (costly) version and have been looking for a linux solution that doesn't
> require a hardware speech synthesizer for ages.
>
>
>
> Now I want to install Ubuntu onto an internal drive (hda1) but my computer
> seems to have a problem at the BIOS stage in detecting bootable devices.  It
> is set to go from a hard drive before a floppy or CD but it scans the drives
> and just stops at a "Insert a bootable CD" prompt (so I'm told - I have no
> vision at all).  I know there is a setting in the BIOS setup that can fix
> this because it's happened before, but I've rarely got anyone around my
> place with useful vision so I want to create a floppy that will boot the
> copy of Ubuntu I installed onto my hard drive.  The installation process
> seems to have gone ok - all the directories are there.
>
>
>
> Thing is I've read all about GRUB and LILO and boot loaders etc on plenty of
> linux sites but can't find anything particularly straight forward sounding
> and not much at all that mentions Ubuntu specifically - which boot loader
> does it use?
>
>
>
> I wonder if someone could give me some straight forward instructions for
> creating a boot floppy to automatically load the copy of Ubuntu on my hda1
> partition (no menu or anything).  My computer skills are pretty advanced but
> I'm fairly new to linux.
>
>
>
> Thanks.
>
> Paul
>
>
>
> By the way I think creating some sort of list of known configurations that
> will run the live CD is a good idea.  7.10 was the first version of Ubuntu
> that worked on my desktop machine but my HP Pavilion laptop wont make a
> sound when booting from it (although it can boot the O/S).