This section describes how to prepare a Dachstein disk for either the Dachstein CD or 'floppy-only' distributions. Note that this section does not cover configuring the networking and services. This section just gets the disk loaded with the proper software and ready to boot. You will require one 3.5" high density disk. You will also need a PC with a connection to the Internet (or at least with a copy of the Dachstein image or Dachstein CD), and Microsoft Windows 95, 98, or 2000 installed on it (Windows NT is untested).
Place the floppy in the disk drive, and locate and run the disk image file you wish to create. This disk image is self-extracting, and will automatically write itself to the disk in drive A:.
some systems have trouble writing the 1680K format disks. The following errors have been observed:
The disk may get written, but the installer hangs up when trying to verify that the disk was written correctly. If this happens, try the disk anyway - in the past, these disks have worked without error.
The computer will lock up trying to begin writing the disk. If this happens, your particular Windows version or configuration is not capable of writing the disk images. Find another Windows PC.
The installer verifies the disk, and finds errors. If this happens, try it again with a new disk. The one you are using is not trustworthy.
If you will be running Dachstein from a laptop, please see Appendix E - Laptop-Specific Issues.
The 1.68 Mb Dachstein disk is now ready to be configured. If all went well you should be ready able to boot off of the disk and be ready to fill out the details of the Network Infomation Sheet.
I have created the CD from both Adaptec's EZ-CD Creator, and from Nero Burning ROM. Both worked flawlessly. Essentially, the process is to select the menu option to create a CD from an image, open the image file (dachstein-cd-v?.?.?.iso), then write the image. If you don't like the Windows-way, and you run XFree86, check out CDR Toaster. It does a nice job of burning CDs from .ISO images.
The Dachstein CD is bootable. I would recommend creating a boot floppy for it (particularly if your firewall's BIOS does not allow booting from CD) to store configuration files. What type of system you create the floppy disk on depends upon which application you plan on using to write the image. I used RAWRITE.EXE, which requires a true MS-DOS system*. Using the newer WinImage will require a Windows 9x/2000 system.
Insure you have RAWRITE.EXE, and the bootdisk.bin file (obtained from the CD) available on the PC.
Boot the PC into MS-DOS
Switch to the directory containing RAWRITE and the disk image file.
Run the following command:
rawrite bootdisk.bin a: [Enter]
Once the disk has been written, remove it, and label it appropriately.
Running RAWRITE.EXE on a Windows9x/2000 box in DOS mode will appear to complete writing correctly, however will leave you with a disk that will at best boot inconsistently.
Launch WinImage
Click the File menu, then Open
In the Files of type dropdown, select All Files.
Locate the bootdisk.bin file, and double-click it. (Once you open it, you should see a list of all of the files in the disk image that will be written to the floppy disk in the WinImage window.)
Click the Disk menu, then select Write disk (or just click the Write disk button in the toolbar).
If the disk has files on it, you will be given a message indicating that the files will be lost. If you are sure you want to place the disk image on this disk, click the Yes button to overwrite it. Otherwise, click the No button, replace the disk and go back to step 5.
Once WinImage is done writing the image, it will indicate so (with a ding), and the progress window will disappear. You may close WinImage, and remove the floppy.