Boot the PC using the floppy labeled "boot disk". Place the recently created root disk in fd0 when prompted. The output should resemble the example below:

GNU GRUB version 0.95

Uncompressing Linux... Ok, booting kernel.
..
.. [various kernel messages]
..
VFS: Insert root floppy to be loaded into RAM disk and press ENTER
RAMDISK: Compressed image found at block 0
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem) readonly.
Freeing unused kernel memory: 178k freed
Checking local filesystem integrity.
/dev/ram0: clean 105/1024 files 2842/4096 blocks
Remounting / as read-write.
Mounting local filesystems.
Setting the hostname.
INIT: Entering runlevel: 1
# _

Use the mount command to check that local filesystems are mounted as read-write. The output should look like the example below.

bash# mount
/dev/root on / type ext2 (rw)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)

Check the hostname.

bash# uname -n
gnu-linux

Bring the system down gracefully with the shutdown command.

bash# shutdown -h now

We should see the following output from init and the shutdown scripts:

INIT: Switching to runlevel: 0
INIT: Sending processes the TERM signal
Terminated
INIT: Sending processes the KILL signal
Unmounting local filesystems.
Initiating system halt.
System halted.