2006-01-22-flashing-without-microsoft-or-floppy-drives.html

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<p>Ran into an issue where we had to flash upgrade some firmware in a server. As usual, firmware downloads came as MS-DOS programs, and told you to put them on a bootable DOS floppy disk and boot from it. This is becoming a real pain in the ass — who actually uses that Microsoft crap anymore? :) Also, what server has a floppy drive?</p>

<p>So, we improvise. Grab this <a href="files/boot.img">FreeDOS boot disk</a>. Mount in Linux:</p>

<pre><code>sudo mount -o loop boot.img /mnt
</code></pre>

<p>Copy whatever files were provided by the vendor (hint: unzip handles most Windows self-extracting .exe’s) into /mnt.</p>

<pre><code>sudo umount /mnt
</code></pre>

<p>Build a CD image:</p>

<pre><code>mkdir cdimage
mkdir cdimage/boot
cp boot.img cdimage/boot
mkisofs -r -b boot/boot.img -c boot/boot.catalog -o cdimage.iso cdimage
</code></pre>

<p>Then burn with your favorite CD burning program. Presto!</p>

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