trying to get dos to boot from lilo

trying to get dos to boot from lilo

[Cheryl Homiak]

I changed my lilo.conf so that the append line is only under the first
image, since I only use brltty with the second and don't need the append
line with dos. I moved the map-drive lines to go between the
"other=/dev/hdb1" and "table=/dev/hdb" lines.
Here is the result of "/usr/sbin/lilo -v -v -q":


LILO version 22.1, Copyright (C) 1992-1998 Werner Almesberger
Development beyond version 21 Copyright (C) 1999-2001 John Coffman
Released 31-Oct-2001 and compiled at 00:52:18 on Dec  5 2001.
MAX_IMAGES = 27

raid_setup returns offset = 00000000
bios_dev: match on geometry alone (0x80)
Reading boot sector from /dev/hda
Global settings:
  Delay before booting: 10.0 seconds
  Command-line timeout: 10.0 seconds
  Always enter boot prompt
  Non-RAID installation
  Serial line access is disabled
  No message for boot prompt
  No default boot command line
Images:
  Linux           * <dev=0xe0,linear=2831>
    No password
    Boot command-line won't be locked
    Single-key activation
    VGA mode: NORMAL
    Kernel is loaded "high", at 0x00100000
    No initial RAM disk
bios_dev: match on geometry alone (0x80)
bios_dev: match on geometry alone (0x80)
    No fallback
bios_dev: match on geometry alone (0x80)
    Options: "ro root=303 speakup_ser=1 sb=0x220,7,1,5"
  1                 <dev=0xe0,linear=2831>
    No password
    Boot command-line won't be locked
    Single-key activation
    VGA mode: NORMAL
    Kernel is loaded "high", at 0x00100000
    No initial RAM disk
bios_dev: match on geometry alone (0x80)
bios_dev: match on geometry alone (0x80)
    No fallback
bios_dev: match on geometry alone (0x80)
    Options: "ro root=303 speakup_ser=1 sb=0x220,7,1,5"
  2                 <dev=0xe0,linear=2852>
    No password
    Boot command-line won't be locked
    Single-key activation
    VGA mode: NORMAL
    Kernel is loaded "high", at 0x00100000
    No initial RAM disk
bios_dev: match on geometry alone (0x80)
bios_dev: match on geometry alone (0x80)
    No fallback
bios_dev: match on geometry alone (0x80)
    Options: "ro root=303 sb=0x220,7,1,5"
  LinuxOLD          <dev=0xe0,linear=2852>
    No password
    Boot command-line won't be locked
    Single-key activation
    VGA mode: NORMAL
    Kernel is loaded "high", at 0x00100000
    No initial RAM disk
bios_dev: match on geometry alone (0x80)
bios_dev: match on geometry alone (0x80)
    No fallback
bios_dev: match on geometry alone (0x80)
    Options: "ro root=303 sb=0x220,7,1,5"
  3                 <dev=0xe0,linear=2873>
    No password
    Boot command-line won't be locked
    Single-key activation
bios_dev: match on geometry alone (0x80)
bios_dev: match on geometry alone (0x80)
    No fallback
bios_dev: match on geometry alone (0x80)
    BIOS drive 0x80 is mapped to 0x81
    BIOS drive 0x81 is mapped to 0x80
  dos               <dev=0xe0,linear=2873>
    No password
    Boot command-line won't be locked
    Single-key activation
bios_dev: match on geometry alone (0x80)
bios_dev: match on geometry alone (0x80)
    No fallback
bios_dev: match on geometry alone (0x80)
    BIOS drive 0x80 is mapped to 0x81
    BIOS drive 0x81 is mapped to 0x80

Re: trying to get dos to boot from lilo

[L. C. Robinson]

On Wed, 12 Dec 2001, Cheryl Homiak wrote:

> I think now that it may not be able to get this disk to boot;  this is
> dos6.2 which is pretty old; the drive it had worked on before was a win98
> installation.

Well the lilo README in /usr/doc/lilo-* (or /usr/share/doc),
which is really a text version of the postscript manual, says:

  MAP-DRIVE=<bios_device_code>  Instructs chain.b to installs a resident 
    driver that re-maps the floppy or hard disk drives. This way, one can 
    boot any operating system from a hard disk different from the first 
    one, as long as that operating system uses _only_ the BIOS to access 
    that hard disk.* This is known to work for PC/MS-DOS.

      *  So you should be very suspicious if the operating system requires 
        any specific configuration or even drivers to use the disk it is 
        booted from. Since there is a general trend to use optimized 
        drivers to fully exploit the hardware capabilities (e.g. 
        non-blocking disk access), booting systems from the second disk may 
        become increasingly difficult.
 
> I went into dos and did fdisk; I had to change to disk 2 in the
> program, and when I went into the option for activating a dos
> partition, it said only partitions on disk 1 could be made
> active.

If I remember right, when lilo is on the MBR, the boot active
flag is irrelevant (you might want to double check the manual
cited above -- it explains the boot process in more detail than
the average person would want or need).

> Theoretically, the use of "map-drive" might work around this
> problem, but I don't think it works in this case.

Quite possibly, as the passage quoted above shows.

> So it looks like I either just keep on booting into dos with a
> floppy, which is no big deal, or experiment with dosemu, or a
> combination of the two.

Dosemu is a great utility, runs most things, and is highly
configurable.  I downloaded the dosemu from Caldera a few years
ago, and they included DR-DOS with it, for free.  DR-DOS is far
superior to any dos ever produced by M$, including the Dos 7
bundled with win9x, and can be substituted under win9x for the
native M$-DOG 7.  Yes, win9x is STILL a graphical add on for
MS-DOG, just as win3.1 was: Caldera won a huge settlement in
their lawsuit against M$, partly because of the illegal
monopolistic bundling (the ability to substitute DR-DOS was a
great court demo, as you can imagine).  You might go to their
site and see what you can get now.  They split into 2
subsidiaries: calderasystems.com, and Lineo, which has been
marketing DR-DOS for embedded systems, but the dosemu packages
may be in the calderasystems.com web or ftp directory tree
(haven't been there in a while).  Of course, DR-DOS can also be
used independently, and includes real, usable multitasking and
networking, along with a superior help system.  Caldera uses
their own changed rpm packaging scheme, so you may have to
convert with the alien utility, or something.

Dosemu from other distributions includes a developing freedos,
with a bunch of unix like shell utilities for dos, which helps
the normal DOS brain damage a lot.  I don't know whether freedos
can run independently yet: it actually might not matter.

LCR

-- 
L. C. Robinson
reply to no_spam+munged_lcr@onewest.net.invalid

People buy MicroShaft for compatibility, but get incompatibility and
instability instead.  This is award winning "innovation".  Find
out how MS holds your data hostage with "The *Lens*"; see
"CyberSnare" at http://www.netaction.org/msoft/cybersnare.html

trying to get dos to boot from lilo

[Cheryl Homiak]

Hi!
I think now that it may not be able to get this disk to boot;  this is
dos6.2 which is pretty old; the drive it had worked on before was a win98
installation.

I went into dos and did fdisk; I had to change to disk 2 in the program,
and when I went into the option for activating a dos partition, it said
only partitions on disk 1 could be made active. Theoretically, the use of
"map-drive" might work around this problem, but I don't think it works in
this case.
So it looks like I either just keep on booting into dos with a
floppy,
which is no big deal, or experiment with dosemu, or a combination of the
two.
thanks.

Cheryl
Cheryl