Appendix D. Writing Image Files to Diskettes

You must write each of the image files you need to a floppy diskette. The easiest methods of writing an image file to a diskette are using dd or rawrite.

Using the dd Command

The dd command in a Linux/UNIX OS is used to do direct dumps from one device (or file) to another. It is an excellent tool to create a disk image or to make a diskette from an image. In Linux, the command is invoked as follows:

bash# dd if=imagefile of=/dev/fd0 bs=72k

You should see something like the following to indicate that the image transfer was successful:

20+0 records in
20+0 records out

If you see a smaller block count, your image did not transfer correctly. If this is the case, it will usually be accompanied by a disk error.

After you make a disk, make sure to label it according to its contents.