Slick Booting (Part 1)

[Alex Snow]

Good idea!
I may install another hdd to completely devote to dos.

--
A message from the system administrator: "I've upped my priority, now up yours!"
On Sun, 6 Apr 2003, Doug wrote:

> (sending in 2 parts because this is too big )
>
> Regarding filesystems and reinstalls ...
>
>  > I would if I had the disk space.  I currently have
>  > a 1.5gb and a 700mb drive.
>
> After doing way too many reinstalls ... and switching
> filsystem formats etc ... I came up with a great way
> to make it almost painless to reinstall and also to
> fix the partitions, or reformat, without needing any
> floppy drive or cdrom drive. Everything is done from
> the hard drive. It works like this:
>
> I put a small DOS partition on every machine now.
> I think this is good to have because some things
> just need DOS, for example many BIOS update programs.
> But there is another reason. Slackware has a slick
> thing called install.zip ... it's basically a root
> file system that is the *same* as booting from the
> slack floppies BUT it sits on a DOS partition. It
> uses the UMSDOS file system, which overlays onto
> a FAT (DOS) file system. Why have this? If any of
> my normal partitions get screwed up, or if I want
> to change from reiserfs to ext3 or xfs or jfs ...
> I can just boot this root file system from hda1
> and it doesn't touch the rest of my disk until
> I execute commands. So I can repartition, or
> reformat, copy stuff around, fix problems, or
> whatever.
>
> This is what I do now ... I set up a partition
> scheme that looks like this ....
>
> 1) Small DOS partition. It serves multiple uses.
>     First it boots DOS for whatever purpose.
>     Second it runs the NT bootloader ... it can
>     start windows 2000 or DOS ... third it has
>     the UMSDOS slackware install root disks
>     (see this readme) ...
>
>     ftp://ftp.slackware.com/pub/slackware/slackware-9.0/rootdisks/install.zip.README
>
>     I have to basically start with a clean disk,
>     but once I have the above UMSDOS filesystem
>     install, I include it in LILO ... so any time
>     I can boot a busybox based "rescue" disk which
>     is actually the slackware install root disk!
>     If *anything* goes wrong with my slackware,
>     I just boot that and then I can mount the
>     other partitions and fix, reformat, whatever.
>
>     This is how I did this: I mount a target drive
>     as slave from a working system. I then use
>     cfdisk on the target drive and create a small
>     DOS partition, and partitions for windows and
>     slackware. I move that target drive to be
>     master and boot with a bootable DOS floppy.
>     I do an FDISK /MBR on the new disk to clear
>     out the master boot record and set up a new
>     DOS master boot record. I reboot to make sure
>     DOS is bootable. At that point the system
>     will boot directly into DOS.
>
> 2) Then I attach a CD-ROM drive and install the
>     slackware, making sure I include the DOS
>     partition in the LILO configuration. After I
>     am done installing slack, I copy that
>     install.zip to the DOS partition and unzip
>     it (from within linux). It creates a linux
>     directory in the DOS partition. I then copy
>     the kernel from the slackware root partition
>     into that umsdos directory:
>
>     cp /boot/vmlinuz /dos/linux
>
>     Then I edit the lilo.conf and add this umsdos
>     partition to my boot options like this:
>
>     # this is the normal root file system
>     image = /boot/vmlinuz
>       root = /dev/hda5
>       label = Slackware-Linux
>       read-only
>
>     # this is the dos/windows boot
>     other = /dev/hda1
>       label = DOS-Windows
>       table = /dev/hda
>
>     # this is the busybox/umsdos file system
>     image = /dos/linux/vmlinuz
>        root = /dev/hda1
>        label = Busybox-Rescue
>        read-write
>
>     Note that this last item points to /dev/hda1
>     which the first partition, and is a small
>     DOS partition where I have unzipped that
>     install.zip file from slackware. Also note
>     that it's listed as "read-write" rather than
>     the usual "read-only" because it's not an
>     ext2 file system, it's UMSDOS overlayed on
>     top of DOS.
>
> 3) After I have LILO booting both the normal
>     slackware and the busybox/rescue from the
>     DOS partition, I install windows. Windows
>     2000 install the NT bootloader into the
>     DOS partition automatically. When I select
>     DOS/Windows from LILO it launched the NT
>     bootloader, which in turn displays its
>     own menu allowing me to boot either DOS
>     or Windows ...
>
> (continued on next message)
>
>    -- Doug
>
>
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