From owner-freebsd-chat Fri Oct 13 2:25:37 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from smtp05.primenet.com (smtp05.primenet.com [206.165.6.135]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 088A437B503 for ; Fri, 13 Oct 2000 02:25:35 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from daemon@localhost) by smtp05.primenet.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id CAA13905; Fri, 13 Oct 2000 02:25:57 -0700 (MST) Received: from usr09.primenet.com(206.165.6.209) via SMTP by smtp05.primenet.com, id smtpdAAAfNaWhB; Fri Oct 13 02:25:49 2000 Received: (from tlambert@localhost) by usr09.primenet.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) id CAA23035; Fri, 13 Oct 2000 02:25:23 -0700 (MST) From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <200010130925.CAA23035@usr09.primenet.com> Subject: Re: booting from dos To: joeo@cracktown.com Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2000 09:25:23 +0000 (GMT) Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: from "joeo@cracktown.com" at Oct 13, 2000 01:54:46 AM X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL2] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org > Was just looking/messing around and found out that the netbsd/i386 > "dosboot.com" can load and boot a freebsd elf kernel. > > ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-1.5_ALPHA2/i386/installation/misc/ > > FreeBSD lost this functionality (IIRC) when it moved to elf and the dos > loader in /sys/boot/biosboot never got updated to understand elf images. Is it just DOS, or is it Windows 95/98/2000/NT as well? The old DOS boot for FreeBSD still works for DOS itself, if you load the transitional a.out second stage loader that can load ELF. I was under the impression that it would not work with FreeBSD as it is today because of the VM86() requirement of the FreeBSD kernel. When the BIOs vectors are replaced by Windows, and then thunked back to the real BIOS, without the Windows there to handle the traps to those vectors, the FreeBSD VM86() calls fail. If the NetBSD stuff works from Windows, I'd be very happy... it's a piece of a puzzle that's been bothering me ever since the Linux "testdrive" version was released. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message