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Thread: how do i run Grub on Knoppix 3.7

  1. #11
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    Gilles,

    With regards to my FAT32 partition, it was initially partitioned as a logical drive, and most OS's require that the partition be a primary partition instead of a logical drive on an extended partition.

    I have read several articles and documentation on installing DOS/FreeDOS on a system that already contains XP. According to most of this information, DOS can only be installed on the C drive. Other articles claim it can be installed on other drive letters. In my case, my primary FAT32 partition is drive e, and my primary NTFS partition containing XP is drive c.

    According to documentation, DOS (well, specifically FreeDOS) can only be installed to a driive that is marked as drive c. however, there are articles where people claim they have had success by "hiding" the partition containing XP. When I booted freedos from floppy, this happened automatically, as DOS can not recognize an NTFS partition. Thus, when booting freedos from floppy, the NTFS drive c was hidden from DOS and instead, the FAT32 partition took its place as the c drive.

    booting dos inndependent of XP (such as from the floppy) does not require any access to the nTFS drive; therefore, there is no danger of DOS doing anything to corrupt the NTFS partition.

    However, what I see happening if I go through with the install is this:
    1. turn on computer - BIOS accesses the primary NTFS partition and loads ntldr (xp bootloader).
    2. ntldr looks in boot.ini and finds 2 entries, one for XP and one for DOS.
    3. If DOS is selected, ntldr will attempt to boot DOS, this differs from the floppy boot because
    the floppy boot never bothered accessing the nTFS partition, therefore there was no drive letter conflict.

    My fear is that DOS will attempt to boot using the drive letter c: for the FAT32 partition when the NTFS partition has already been accessed as drive c. I am concerned that there may be some conflict that could result in my drive being corrupted because DOS won't see the fact that the NTFS partition was already assigned drive c and it will assign the FAT32 partition to the drive letter c as well.

    Basically it depends on when the drive letters are assigned?? If they are assigned before ntldr is accessed, then I wonder what will happen when DOS finally loads and fails to recognize c as the NTFS, but if somehow the drive letters are assigned by the corresponding OS, then I don't think it will be a problem. I think since boot.ini uses multi(0)disk(0)vdisk(0)partition(1) instead of the actual drive letter, I think the letters are probably assiigned after the start of the boot process. Since you have more experience on this subject than I do, i wanted to hear if these fears are ridiculous or not, and what you suggest I put in the boot.ini file in order to boot DOS. In addition, I have heard that installing DOS after XP will cause the MBR to be overwritten.

    What would you suggest? sorry if some of this does sound ridiculous, but there is so much conflicting and ambiguous information out there that I don't know what I should do. Thanks for your patience and for putting up with my long winded posts!

    James

  2. #12
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    Quote Originally Posted by jmort
    With regards to my FAT32 partition, it was initially partitioned as a logical drive, and most OS's require that the partition be a primary partition instead of a logical drive on an extended partition.
    This is partially true. Depends on which OS. Dos and Linux do not care, but Windows does...

    Quote Originally Posted by jmort
    I have read several articles and documentation on installing DOS/FreeDOS on a system that already contains XP. According to most of this information, DOS can only be installed on the C drive. Other articles claim it can be installed on other drive letters. In my case, my primary FAT32 partition is drive e, and my primary NTFS partition containing XP is drive c.

    According to documentation, DOS (well, specifically FreeDOS) can only be installed to a driive that is marked as drive c. however, there are articles where people claim they have had success by "hiding" the partition containing XP. When I booted freedos from floppy, this happened automatically, as DOS can not recognize an NTFS partition. Thus, when booting freedos from floppy, the NTFS drive c was hidden from DOS and instead, the FAT32 partition took its place as the c drive.

    booting dos inndependent of XP (such as from the floppy) does not require any access to the nTFS drive; therefore, there is no danger of DOS doing anything to corrupt the NTFS partition.
    You are absolutely right. Actually grub (as other bootloaders) allows you to (un)-hide partitions before booting. This may be required in some complicated setups but not in your case. As you wrote, dos boot will only see a single c partition.

    Quote Originally Posted by jmort
    However, what I see happening if I go through with the install is this:
    1. turn on computer - BIOS accesses the primary NTFS partition and loads ntldr (xp bootloader).
    2. ntldr looks in boot.ini and finds 2 entries, one for XP and one for DOS.
    3. If DOS is selected, ntldr will attempt to boot DOS, this differs from the floppy boot because
    the floppy boot never bothered accessing the nTFS partition, therefore there was no drive letter conflict.

    My fear is that DOS will attempt to boot using the drive letter c: for the FAT32 partition when the NTFS partition has already been accessed as drive c. I am concerned that there may be some conflict that could result in my drive being corrupted because DOS won't see the fact that the NTFS partition was already assigned drive c and it will assign the FAT32 partition to the drive letter c as well.

    Basically it depends on when the drive letters are assigned?? If they are assigned before ntldr is accessed, then I wonder what will happen when DOS finally loads and fails to recognize c as the NTFS, but if somehow the drive letters are assigned by the corresponding OS, then I don't think it will be a problem. I think since boot.ini uses multi(0)disk(0)vdisk(0)partition(1) instead of the actual drive letter, I think the letters are probably assiigned after the start of the boot process. Since you have more experience on this subject than I do, i wanted to hear if these fears are ridiculous or not, and what you suggest I put in the boot.ini file in order to boot DOS. In addition, I have heard that installing DOS after XP will cause the MBR to be overwritten.
    When the DOS system will be loaded, it will re-enumerate the devices and will only know about FAT16/32 partitions, so you should not worry about your ntfs partition at that time. And if you boot from a USB dongle of floppy disk, the system loaded at that time will not understand ntfs either, so it should not write to your ntfs partition. But be carefull, the sys.com do not touch the mbr of your disk, but if you install 98se or me it will for sure erase your mbr and break your xp bootloader. I am not sure about freedos, but you probably want to make a backup if you plan to give it a try. I know that the USB dongle approach works since there is no program writing in the mbr and dos only knows about the fat32 partition, there is no risk to damage anything relative to xp. But If you use large disks, you may be extremely careful, since some bios and obviously dos cannot handle properly disk(s) larger than 132GB (48 bit addressing limitation). Some old bios may even screw up your data on disks larger than 32GB. And some very old bios will even have problem with overlapping data when adressing over a 8, and 2GB lmit ...
    So to summarize, to be safe I would avoid any kind of a generic install without a serious backup. In an other hand I feel very comfortable to install a dos system using the sys.com program assuming you have booted on a media already running the dos system you are willing to install. I used the USB dongle several times but your bios needs to support such a boot type. A floppy disk boot is an other good alternaltive. Well, in most cases, if your computer do not have a floppy drive, the bios will support a usb boot. So If you have a recent bios and a USB dongle, you have already everything in your hands to get it to work. Good Luck.
    Cheers, Gilles

  3. #13
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    okay, i think i feel more comfortable attempting this, all the important things are backed up already, so... I think Ill give it a shot.

    thank you,
    james

  4. #14
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    Hi again,

    Gilles, please forgive me, but I must ask a very stupid question. What do I need to put inn my boot.ini file inn order to get it to boot DOS? Do I need to make changes to the menu.lst in order to run GRUB.EXE? does menu.lst need to be on the E drive or the C drive.

    here is my current boot.ini:

    [boot loader]
    timeout=30
    default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
    [operating systems]
    multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
    e:\grldr="Start Grub"
    e:\bootgrub="Start Grub (old)"
    c:\="DOS from c"
    c:\command.com="DOS C Command.com"
    e:\="DOS e"
    e:\COMMAND.COM="dos e COMMANDCOM"

    As you can see, I have attempted to boot dos in 4 different ways, but all of them report errors. The ones involving the C drive say there was a problem reading the device or somethinng along those lines. The two cases with the E drive say a windows dll file is nont found. I believe it is hal.dll. the only executable file that sys.com e: copied was command.com.

    thanks again!
    james

  5. #15
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    Quote Originally Posted by jmort
    Hi again,...As you can see, I have attempted to boot dos in 4 different ways, but all of them report errors. The ones involving the C drive say there was a problem reading the device or somethinng along those lines. The two cases with the E drive say a windows dll file is nont found. I believe it is hal.dll. the only executable file that sys.com e: copied was command.com. thanks again! james
    Well, I am a little bit confused. Could you please give a little bit of history. What did you do so far ? Did you use a USB dongle (with my setup), a floppy disk (which one) ? Did you use freedos or regular dos ? After using sys.com, you should see io.sys, msdos.sys and command.com (but they may be hidden files). Be aware that io.sys cannot be copied, you have to use sys.com to install it since io.sys need to be stored in a special location of the partition. msdos.sys and command.com can be copied manually. Under xp, what letter is used for your fat32 partition ? Cheers, Gilles

  6. #16
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    Gilles,

    You should congratulate me on my first ever successful dual boot! I've successfully installed FreeDOS Beta 9 service Release 1 on my E: FAT32 primary partition. Both windows xp and Freedos are bootable, and there appears to be no complications! Thank you for your help on this matter. For anyone who is interested in this setup, here is what I did:

    Background:
    system: Dell Inspiron 3800 Celeron 600mHz processor with 10GB harddrive
    partitions: 8GB C: NTFS Windows XP Professional
    1GB E: FAT32 FreeDOS Beta 9 Service Release 1

    I will not go into the details of resizing partitions as there is plenty of info on this forum and the net in general on this subject. In order for this particular setup to work, the following prerequisites must be met:

    1. Windows XP Professional must be installed on the C drive on an NTFS partition.

    2. There must be a second FAT32 primary partition created on your system. In my case, this is the E: drive; thus, wherever you see an E:, replace with the corresponding drive letter of your FAT32 partition. (I believe the only way to create a "primary" partition is to right click on My computer -> manage -> disk management. I originally used DISKPART on the Recovery Console and it created a logical drive. While it is possible to boot off of a logical drive according to some sources, the procedure is more complicated.)

    3. You must have downloaded the FDOS1440.IMG file, and rawrite.exe from the Freedos.org webpage. furthermore, you must use rawrite in order to create a bootable floppy for FreeDOS. The documentation on freedos.org will explain how to create a bootable FreeDOS floppy from the image file using rawrite. This basically takes only a second or two, just make sure the diskette is formatted with some sort of FAT filesystem.

    Link to image file: http://www.freedos.org/freedos/files/
    Link to documentation: http://sourceforge.net/docman/displa...group_id=18412

    FROM XP:
    Basically, just Run RAWRITE
    Follow the prompts. Tell the program to read from MINI.IMG and to write to A:
    (You may need to substitute MINI.IMG with FDOS1440.IMG, or whatever the IMG filename is)

    Once the prerequisites have been met, you can move on to the next set of instructions:
    Here is a link to some instuctions that I found on the web to help with this installation:
    http://marc.herbert.free.fr/linux/fr...removable.html

    The only problem I had was in the INSTALLING section of this link. Please read and familiarize yourself with the instructions.

    First, I downloaded the zip archive as instructed: http://marc.herbert.free.fr/FDOS/
    Extract the zip to the E: FAT32 partition to the root directory.
    Run E:\FREEDOS\SETUP\INSTALL\INSTALL.EXE and follow the prompts. According to the instructions, you want to select the text install and NOT the GUI install. Also, this is the MINI distribution. The prompts should ask you for a source and a target, these are E:\FREEDOS\PACKAGES and E:\FDOS respectively.

    NOTE: DO NOT RUN \FDOS\POSTINST.BAT. I have not tried it, but the instructions state to avoid it. You are welcome to try it, but I chose instead to follow the substituted instructions.

    The final stp is where I run into trouble. Apparently, sys.com won't work on a machine booted with XP on a FAT32 partition. a FAT16 may work, but not on the FAT32. If this is the case with your machine, use the following substitutions:

    Shut down the machine and reboot using the floppy FreeDOS bootdisk.
    I chose safemode just to be sure no automated scripts ran.

    Type c: <enter> at the a:\ prompt
    Type dir <enter> and take note of the files in the directory. Your C drive should now be the FAT32 partition, as FreeDOS will not see your NTFS drive. Do not be concerned. This is exactly what should happen. Instead of typing the commands listed in the final steps of the INSTALLATION section, use these instead:

    C:
    cd fdos
    bin\sys C: C:\FDOSBOOT.BIN BOOTONLY
    copy bin\kernel32.sys C:\kernel.sys
    (type yes to overwrite if prompted)
    cd NLS
    set lang=EN
    makecmd
    copy command.com C:\
    (type yes to overwrite if prompted)

    Now that this has been completed, take note of the fact that the root now contains a 512 byte file called FDOSBOOT.BIN. Reboot the machine to XP (remove the disk from drive A). Now, follow the remaining instructions regarding editing the boot.ini file titled: Booting FreeDOS. After using attrib -s -h -r boot.ini I would make a backup copy to be safe, as the XP recovery console has no text editor, but you could still copy the backup copy to boot.ini if there is a problem. Your boot.ini file should look like this:

    [boot loader]
    timeout=30
    default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
    [operating systems]
    multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
    C:\FDOSBOOT.BIN="FreeDOS Beta 9 Service Release 1"

    Now, you may be asking why the last line starts with a C rather than an E, since we know that FDOSBOOT.BIN is on the FAT32 partition. To eliminate confusion, the XP bootloader is located on the NTFS partition; therefore, you must copy e:\FDOSBOOT.BIN to C:\FDOSBOOT.BIN. Eessentially, once control is passed to FreeDOS, the NTFS C: partition is hidden and FAT32 becomes C:

    FDCONFIG.SYS may need to be copied from the root of the floppy to the root of e:\
    You also may need to edit FDCONFIG.SYS to comment out everything related to the install. Basically, my FDCONFIG.SYS file just contains:

    !SWITCHES=/E
    DEVICE=C:\FDOS\BIN\HIMEM.EXE
    SHELL=C:\COMMAND.COM /P=C:\autoexec.bat

    !DOSDATA=UMB
    !DOS=UMB
    !FILES=20
    !BUFFERS=20
    !LASTDRIVE=Z

    Note the /P switch, in FreeDOS, the /P switch allows the user to load a batch file to run at
    startup. Therefore, it is possible to create a boot menu similar to the one in FDCONFIG.SYS on the floppy disk. In other words, the autoexec.bat file could contain commands to start DOS normally while a BOOTKNOP.BAT file could contain: loadlin.exe @params.txt. Since the details of how to accmomplish this are not important for knoppix, lets move on.

    Once FDOSBOOT.BIN has been copied to c:\ you should be good to go. You should be able to boot either Windows XP or FreeDOS.

    I think I have hit all the critical points of this install. Now all I have left to do is to configure GRUB on the FAT32 partition to boot KNOPPIX.

    Gilles, if there is anything important that you think I may have left out or anything that seems unclear, please let me know so that I may clarify.

    James

  7. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by jmort
    Gilles, if there is anything important that you think I may have left out or anything that seems unclear, please let me know so that I may clarify. James
    You did good since it is working. Congratulation !
    FDOSBOOT.BIN is the FreeDOS 512 bytes long partition boot sector. I would just add that at this point you can use either lilo (loadlin.xe) or grub (grub.exe) Both are working pretty well, but I have a preference for grub. Loadlin.exe will return to a dos prompt in case of the boot fails, but grub have a command line shell with auto completion which is very handy. If you use grub, be sure to not load emm386.exe. Since you got freedos now runing from your xp boot loader, you are very close to get knoppix running from the ISO file. Good Luck, Gilles

  8. #18
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    Okay, the FreeDOS thing is working out quite nicely, considerinnng all the hype about needing to be on the c: partition.

    I am not sure how to proceed with the rest of the install. Grub still does not want to load. I have typed in boot.ini: c:\grub.exe e:\grub.exe I have put shell=grub.exe in the config.sys file yet I still can not get Grub to load. Grub says this version of dos is not supported, so I tried loadlin:

    loadlin.exe c:\knoppix\k36.iso /dev/ram rw initrd=c:\knoppix\minirt24_ntfs.gz

    The error message that this gave was that the file was not a kernel image. I don't know what arguments that I should use, nor do I understand how to boot from the iso on ntfs from dos. What could i I be doing wrong? What do i put in boot.ini to boot grub from the fat32? what is wrong with my loadlin setup?? What's missing?

    Thanks again,
    james

  9. #19
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    Quote Originally Posted by jmort
    Okay, the FreeDOS thing is working out quite nicely, considerinnng all the hype about needing to be on the c: partition.
    Good. Now after booting (free)DOS on your fat32 partition, do you have a dos prompt: "C:\>" ? I yes did you try to run grub by typing grub.exe [enter] ? Do you get the grub prompt: ">" ? if you press [tab], do you get a list of the commands ?
    I a not sure that grub.exe will work with the latest freedos release, I didn't try. I know that there is some issues with some "buggy" versions of freedos. I know that grub.exe is working with the 98se version I included in my grud.zip.
    You need to get grub working (list of commands and grub prompt) before you can do anything with the menu.lst.
    This has nothing to do with the boot.ini: boot.ini is used to start (free)dos, from the dos prompt you start grub.exe, and if evertything is right, you get the grub shell... Remember no emm386.exe with grub.exe ...

    Quote Originally Posted by jmort
    ...so I tried loadlin: loadlin.exe c:\knoppix\k36.iso /dev/ram rw initrd=c:\knoppix\minirt24_ntfs.gz
    Well, first of all only the latest version of loadlin.exe (1.6C, C is important) will handle compressed linux kernel. Then the syntax is quite different, you may try something like this assuming that loadlin.exe, knoppix...iso, linux26 and the minirt26_ntfs.gz files are in your fat32 (hda2) c:\ root directory (but I didn't try it):
    loadlin.exe linux26 -v initrd=minirt26_ntfs.gz ramdisk_size=100000 init=/etc/init lang=us apm=power-off vga=791 nomce quiet bootfrom=/dev/hda2/*.iso noprompt (all in one line from the loadlin.exe)
    Good luck, Gilles

  10. #20
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    Gilles,

    We are making progress here. I am sorry to say that grub.exe returned an error: Sorry, only FreeDOS kernel 2032 is supported for grub. It's too bad since almost every school of thought claims that grub is the preferred bootloader. Plus, I am beginning to understand menu.lst and "grubspeak".

    That's okay though, as I am making progress with loadlin.exe. I can get it to actually start the boot process!! However, it hangs because it claims it can not find the knoppix filesystem. This was using the following configuration:

    linux24 nofirewire noscsi nodma fromhd=/dev/hda1 ramdisk_size=100000 init=/etc/init initrd=minirt~1.gz quiet lang=us vga=normal

    *the minirt~1.gz was required for this particular version of dos, the minirt24_ntfs.gz filename was causing issues. Once I renamed the file is when the boot process actually started.

    I also added BOOT_IMAGE=k36.iso and still obtain the same results. I have also tried using fromhd=/dev/hda2 (the FAT32) with the same results.

    Next, I am going to try using the bootfrom cheatcode as you suggested. I have a feeling that the bootfrom cheatcode is the key to this. If it will not work, then I will atttempt a boot from the knoppix loopback file located on the cd as /knoppix/knoppix.

    I'll keep you updated on my progress. Thank you.

    james

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