Boot from memory-stick?

Kevin J. Cummings cummings at kjchome.homeip.net
Mon Jul 25 22:53:26 UTC 2005


Mike McCarty wrote:
> Fritz Whittington wrote:
> 
>> On or about 2005-07-25 03:45, Paul Howarth whipped out a trusty #2 
>> pencil and scribbled:
>>
>>> Monkey Pet wrote:
> 
> 
> [that he wants a multi-boot system]
> 
>> An even better solution requires no extra floppies, CD's or even a USB 
>> memory stick.  Just install GRUB on the BR of the boot *partition* 
>> (not in the MBR), copy the usual boot loader code from the partition, 
>> install it on the C: drive as a file, and add the option to your 
>> C:\boot.ini file.  Easy instructions are at:
>> http://board.iexbeta.com/lofiversion/index.php/t47038.html
>>
>> I use this myself under Windows 2000 to boot Linux, and it works great.
>>
> 
> That is the way I boot from XP. But you do presume. This will
> not work with Windows 95 or Windows 98, for example. It will
> work with Windows NT.

I used to use something called BOOT.SYS in combination with BOOTLIN.COM, 
a windows 95 device driver and an MS-DOS program that you could use in 
your CONFIG.SYS file to present a menu to boot from.  The top of my 
CONFIG.SYS file used to look like this:

> DEVICE  = C:\DRIVERS\BOOT.SYS /T5
> 
> DEVICE  = BOOT.1 LINUX
> SHELL   = C:\COMMANDS\BOOTLIN.COM C:\LINUX\VMLINUZ
> 
> DEVICE  = BOOT.2 OLD LINUX
> SHELL   = C:\COMMANDS\BOOTLIN.COM C:\LINUX\VMLINUZ.OLD
> 
> DEVICE  = BOOT.3 NEW LINUX
> SHELL   = C:\COMMANDS\BOOTLIN.COM C:\LINUX\VMLINUZ.NEW
> 
> DEVICE  = BOOT.4 MS-DOS
> BUFFERS = 20
> FILES   = 40

It should work from Windows-98 too.  Of course, I switched to LILO and 
then GRUB when they became available....

Of course, not having used them in years, I have no idea if they are 
still available, and even if they are, I don't know if they will still 
work with Fedora kernels or initrds....

-- 
Kevin J. Cummings
kjchome at rcn.com
cummings at kjchome.homeip.net
cummings at kjc386.framingham.ma.us




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