Quote Originally Posted by mack
When xpgrub fails (on 95/98/ME), does it do any damage or does it just exit with some error code ? If it fails gracefully, the script can detect it and assume 95/98/ME (or maybe there's a better way to detect windows version. I'm not familiar with windows but I'm sure it has something equiv to uname(1)). Once the script figures a dos-based version of windows is in place, it will add a boot option with loadlin.
unfortunately, it would popup a window system message saying certain function linked in the EXE is not available. it would not do any harm to the system but it can't be a automated operation. If the code is compiled under Microsoft VC environment, I know how to make it more 'installation' friendly but since it is someone else work using cygnus C which I don't know too well, it would be too much effort to change it, for the moment. Of course, if Installshield is being used, it can by itself detect the kind of running OS.

yes, Smart Boot Manager looks cool. However, as far as I can tell it has no USB support yet. I already modified the initrd to support the USB cdrom, but since Smart Boot Manager won't be able to handle it by itself, I'll just use the above script to load vmlinuz+initrd from C:\boot\ and have them handle the USB stuff.
good point. a rescue diskette/CD with the proper driver is better, for booting linux. Though if one wants to boot something off the CD like a XP installation CD still need SBM but then who need that [/quote]