Date: Fri, 02 Jul 1999 15:27:04 +0200 From: Graham Wheeler <gram@cequrux.com> To: Vince Vielhaber <vev@michvhf.com> Cc: Graham Wheeler <gram@cdsec.com>, hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Porting LILO to FreeBSD Message-ID: <377CBE28.F3D4E15A@cdsec.com> References: <Pine.BSF.4.05.9907020845030.10169-100000@cdsec.com>
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Vince Vielhaber wrote: > > On Fri, 2 Jul 1999, Graham Wheeler wrote: > > > Hi all > > > > I currently have Linux installed in a DOS partition for one reason > > only, and that is that I want to use LILO. I would love to be able > > to get LILO working under FreeBSD so that I can free up all the space > > used up by Linux. The reason I want to use LILO is because it allows > > me to swap my C: and D: drives around when booting DOS. This lets me > > have Win95 bootable on my real C: drive, but lets me boot a Win95-free > > DOS 6.2 and Windows 3.1 on my D: drive, which gets logically mapped to > > C:. I haven't found any other freeware boot loaders that have this > > ability. > > > > Has anyone ever attempted to port LILO to FreeBSD? I imagine that it > > should be possible, but would require some serious changes in low-level > > disk access code, to map disk files to physical disk locations, etc. > > If anyone has any experience with this, or has any advice (including > > pointing me to other boot loaders that can get the BIOS to switch > > disks that will work purely from DOS or FreeBSD), please let me know... > > On CD #1 there's a file called osbsbeta.exe. That version allows you > to boot from different physical devices whereas osbs135.exe doesn't. > I'm using it on one machine that has 95, dos6, os2 and freebsd on > different drives. > > I should mention that CD #1 I'm referring to is from 2.2.6, I haven't > looked at any newer versions. I have a pretty full set up to 3.2 so finding it won't be a problem. Does it actually logically switch the disks, though? There are several that will allow booting from secondary disks; what I like about LILO is that when I boot Win95, then C:\WINDOWS is the main windows directory, and when I boot DoS 6.2 and run Win 3.1, then C:\WINDOWS is *still* the main directory (for 3.1 this time). I.e. under DOS, C: is actually the secondary drive and D: the primary. To do this magic lilo has to load up a special secondary loader program (/boot/any_d.b). I'll check it out, though. I used to use osbs135 before LILO, and like it more than LILO, but it didn't have the critical feature... It would still be interesting to port LILO to FreeBSD... The only reason I even want to do this is that I still have a number of old DOS games that won't work under Win95. And dosemu and Wine just don't cut it either, unfortunately. -- Dr Graham Wheeler E-mail: gram@cequrux.com Cequrux Technologies Phone: +27(21)423-6065/6/7 Firewalls/Virtual Private Networks Fax: +27(21)24-3656 Data/Network Security Specialists WWW: http://www.cequrux.com/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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