Esteemed Colleagues:
I have a computer, with an MBR-partitioned disk, that is configured to
perform Legacy boot. Microsoft Windows is installed on three primary
partitions, because that is what Windows does, and every other
operating system on this computer must find a home for itself within
the logical partitions carved out of the fourth, extended partition.
I want to install FreeDOS on a logical partition. So my first
question is: Does FreeDOS even support this? Many operating systems
do not, and only support installation on primary partitions, and on
GPT-partitioned disks.
If the answer to the first question is Yes, then I can continue this
narrative, otherwise the remainder of this posting is moot. I copied
FD13FULL.img to a USB stick, stuck it into the above-described
computer, and instructed it to boot from the USB device. The
installation procedure scares me. I have already partitioned my disk
and designated in my mind the logical slice onto which I want to
install FreeDOS, but the installation procedure on FD13FULL.img
implies that I must repartition my disk, and I am afraid to proceed,
lest I irretrievably trash my entire computer.
Is it possible to install FreeDOS using UNIX commands, which I know
how to control? I envision doing a "mkfs -t vfat" on the logical
slice of disk on which I want to install the system, mounting the USB
stick on some arbitrary directory, and then populating the
newly-created vfat filesystem by means of the cp and unzip commands
(the packages, I noticed -- and there is a huge number of them -- are
zip files, but there are also some files that are fundamental to
system that are already present without having to be unzipped, which I
envision simply copying over). And then finally I envision using the
dd command in some way to populate the first block of the vfat
filesystem with a bootloader, so that GRUB can boot FreeDOS with
something along the lines of "chainloader (hd0,msdos11)+1". Or
perhaps a bootloader is unnecessary, perhaps GRUB can be given the
name of the FreeDOS kernel and boot directly into it without having to
use the chainloader command.
Is this possible? If a FreeDOS system is populated in this way, will
the kernel be able to boot and then figure out how big the disk is and
all the other things that will be different than they were in
FD13FULL.img? If not, is there anyone reading this who is willing to
gently and patiently walk me thru the native install procedure and
assure me that it will not trash my hard drive?
As always, thank you in advance for any and all replies.
Jay F. Shachter
6424 North Whipple Street
Chicago IL 60645-4111
(1-773)7613784 landline
(1-410)9964737 GoogleVoice
j...@m5.chicago.il.us
http://m5.chicago.il.us
"Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur"
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