A.1. Pre-made Bootdisks

These are sources for distribution bootdisks. Please use one of the mirror sites to reduce the load on these machines.

• Slackware bootdisks, rootdisks and Slackware mirror sites

• RedHat bootdisks and Red Hat mirror sites

• Debian bootdisks and Debian mirror sites

• Mandrake downloads

In addition to the distribution bootdisks, the following rescue disk images are available. Unless otherwise specified, these are available in the directory http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/system/recovery/!INDEX.html

• RIP is a boot/rescue system which comes in several versions: one that fits on a 1.44M floppy diskette and one that fits on a CD-ROM. It has large file support and many utility programs for disk maintenance and rescue. It has support for ext2, ext3, iso9660, msdos, ntfs, reiserfs, ufs and vfat. RIP is available from http://www.tux.org/pub/people/kent-robotti/looplinux/rip/index.html

• tomsrtbt, by Tom Oehser, is a single-disk boot/root disk based on kernel 2.0, with a large set of features and support programs. It supports IDE, SCSI, tape, network adaptors, PCMCIA and more. About 100 utility programs and tools are included for fixing and restoring disks. The package also includes scripts for disassembling and reconstructing the images so that new material can be added if necessary.

• rescue02, by John Comyns, is a rescue disk based on kernel 1.3.84, with support for IDE and Adaptec 1542 and NCR53C7,8xx. It uses ELF binaries but it has enough commands so that it can be used on any system. There are modules that can be loaded after booting for all other SCSI cards. It probably won't work on systems with 4 mb of ram since it uses a 3 mb ram disk.

• resque_disk-2.0.22, by Sergei Viznyuk, is a full-featured boot/root disk based on kernel 2.0.22 with built-in support for IDE, many difference SCSI controllers, and ELF/AOUT. Also includes many modules and useful utilities for repairing and restoring a hard disk.

• cramdisk images, based on the 2.0.23 kernel, available for 4 meg and 8 meg machines. They include math emulation and networking (PPP and dialin script, NE2000, 3C509), or support for the parallel port ZIP drive. These diskette images will boot on a 386 with 4MB RAM. MSDOS support is included so you can download from the net to a DOS partition.