From: liljeber@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Mika Pekka Liljeberg) Subject: Re: MBR recommendation needed Date: 7 Sep 1992 08:10:10 GMT
In article <1992Sep6.153433.22751@pool.info.sunyit.edu> ujlh@pool.info.sunyit.edu (James Henrickson) wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I would like to boot DOS and Linux off the hard drive. I am currently
> using LILO and the MS-DOS MBR with the active partition set to Linux.
> I am looking for an MBR similar to the one that come with Coherent, that
> will boot the active partition by default but allow me to select the boot
> partition if I want to boot DOS. I have seen a few less-flexible MBR's
> that either wait for you to make a selection (no timeout default) or have
> no selection (like the DOS MBR), and I have seen DOS utilities that will
> boot Linux (I don't want to be dependent on DOS), but I haven't quite
> found what I'm looking for. I will, of course, settle for a clone of
> the Coherent MBR if one is available but I'd prefer a user-defined
> timeout period.
Why don't you just use lilo as the MBR? It will select the first mapped
kernel as the default at bootup. However, if you press alt (or shift or
control, don't remember exactly) you'll get a prompt "Boot: " to which
you can type the name of the kernel you wish to boot. Lilo also allows
you to chain boot dos partitions. Here's a copy of my lilo install
script. It sets up several useful boot options:
#!/bin/sh
/etc/lilo/lilo -c -b /dev/hda -i /etc/lilo/boot.b $* \
linux=/vmunix \
flinux=/vmunix,/dev/fd1 \
new=/usr/src/linux/Image \
fnew=/usr/src/linux/Image,/dev/fd1 \
dos=/etc/lilo/chain.b+/dev/hda4@/dev/hda
With these settings I can boot linux from either /vmunix or
/usr/src/linux/Image using either floppy or hard disk root devive.
The last one let's me boot dos from drive C: on hard disk 0.
> The only reason I'm looking for such a thing is because I don't want
> to use a floppy to boot DOS when someone wants to use my machine for
> word processing or games. :-)
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> --
> Jim H.
> *
> * James L. Henrickson
> * ujlh@sunyit.edu "Some day I might have a real .signature!"
Mika