Has This Been Tried? Hybrid DOS/Knoppix DVD?

[sakiZ]

I got to thinking about how I boot to DOS then, via Loadlin.exe boot up Knoppix.

I have a DOS rescue CD and I have the Knoppix Live CD. Hmmm.

It got me wondering.

Would it be possible to make a super rescue DVD that first boots to DOS and contains a lot of DOS utilities. Then via a batch file run Knoppix if desired? You could perhaps even have more than one iso image on it. Say, regular Knoppix and STD Knoppix and run either one. ??????

Is this possible?

sakiZ

[ruymbeke]

I got to thinking about how I boot to DOS then, via Loadlin.exe boot up Knoppix.
I have a DOS rescue CD and I have the Knoppix Live CD. Hmmm.
It got me wondering.
Would it be possible to make a super rescue DVD that first boots to DOS and contains a lot of DOS utilities. Then via a batch file run Knoppix if desired? You could perhaps even have more than one iso image on it. Say, regular Knoppix and STD Knoppix and run either one. ??????
Is this possible?
sakiZ
Of course. I have done it using grub. I can load knoppix from the iso, dos from a floppy disk image file and use a ramdisk to load even more applications from the cd/dvd, and even win98 from a hd file image into a ramdisk (but this will work only on a specific computer since windoze will look for the missing driver since there is no boot hw autodectection). The trick is to create the iso image using mkisofs and use the no emulation mode to load grub. You could also boot the iso using a floppy boot image with a dos boot and then use loadlin.exe or grub.exe to start various versions of linux. You can even start grub4lin from loadlin.exe to run grub and still have emm386 loaded.
Hope this helps, Gilles

[sakiZ]

I'll try using a floppy with loadlin.exe first.

I just looked that the MKISOFS website. Looks like it has not been updated in several years.

sakiZ

[ruymbeke]

I'll try using a floppy with loadlin.exe first.
I just looked that the MKISOFS website. Looks like it has not been updated in several years.
sakiZ
It just works great as is (at least for me). And a *LOT* of people are using this tool to create (fancy) cd/dvd...
You can even use the cywin port of it on a xp system: cygwin1.dll + mkisofs.exe
Cheers, Gilles