The boot-floppies package contains all of the
source code and documentation for the installation floppies.
The Rescue Floppy has an MS-DOS filesystem, and you should be
able to access it from a DOS or Windows system or anything else that
can mount DOS disks. The Linux kernel is in the file
linux. The file root.bin is a
gzip-compressed disk image of a 1.44 MB Minix filesystem, and will be
loaded into the RAM disk and used as the root filesystem.
If you find it necessary to replace the kernel on the Rescue Floppy, you must configure your new kernel with these features linked in, not in loadable modules:
linux on the
Rescue Floppy, and then run the shell script rdev.sh
that you'll find on the floppy.
The base floppies contain a 512-byte header followed by a portion of a
gzip-compressed tar archive. If you strip off the headers and
then concatenate the contents of the base floppies, the result should
be the compressed tar archive. The archive contains the base system
that will be installed on your hard disk. Once this archive is
installed, you must go through the ``Configure the Base System''
menu item in the installation system and other menu items to configure
the network and install the operating system kernel and modules before
the system will be usable.