How to Boot a Floppy Image Using the Grub Bootloader

Ever faced the Problem that either your Server doesn't have a floppy drive or you can't insert a floppy into it due to it being in the Datacenter and you can't get to it?

Well as long as you can access the Console you can still Flash your BIOS/Hardware Firmware using Grub. Here is how I flashed a HP NetRaid 1M BIOS Firmware using Grub:

1. Download the Firmware: MegaRaid 1M H.02.02 (03.09.2003 - fw_nr_1m2m_h0202_5.exe)
2. Create the floppy Image (VirtualBox worked fine)
3. Install syslinux (sudo apt-get install syslinux)
4. Copy /usr/lib/syslinux/memdisk + your Floppy Image to /boot
5. Edit /boot/grub/menu.lst

title Floppy Image Flash BIOS Netraid 1M/2M
root (hd0,0)
kernel /memdisk
initrd /netraid-1m-flash.img

Reboot your Server and Flash the BIOS of your Controller, and finally you can use your HP NetRaid 1M controller with Linux 2.6.26.

NOTE: The floppy image will be read-only; all changes will be lost when the computer is rebooted. It might be handy to create a small partition on your hard drive that the operating system can write to.