[K12OSN] boot from local ntfs HD

Daniel Button button at gti.net
Thu Mar 25 15:43:25 UTC 2004


Hi,

	I have not seen anybody suggesting to use the Windows boot loader for
NT.  You can boot linux from it.  I have done soemthing similar with the
boot image with Windows 98, so I expect that the results should be
similar.

	I downloaded my boot file from www.rom-o-matic.net.  The file I
requested for download has a ".com" extension so that it will boot in
the DOS environment.  I put the file in a sub directory and modified the
config.sys and autoexec.bat files to give a choice between windows and
ltsp.  The ltsp option would call the bootrom file with the ".com"
extension and do a net boot from the server into lstp.  Works great.

	I expect that you could do the same in NT with the boot.ini file.  Edit
the file to include another line with the path and filename plus what
you want the option to be called.  (c:\tmp\etherboot.com     LTSP)  I
have done this to have dual-boot boxes for Linux and Windows.  Works
great.  Easier than lilo or grub unfortunate to say!  (I love my
GRUB!!)  There is a mini-howto for doing multi-boot with the windows
boot loader at http://tldp.org.  Check it out.  Just substitute the boot
file that it suggests with you bootfile.com from rom-o-matic.  You won't
need a seperate partition.

	Hope that this helps!!

Dan


        Message: 2
        Date: Wed, 24 Mar 2004 13:25:55 -0600
        From: "Jim Kronebusch" <jim at winonacotter.org>
        Subject: RE: [K12OSN] boot from local ntfs HD
        To: "'A technical support and discussion community for users of
        the
                K12OS   Linux distribution.'" <k12osn at redhat.com>
        Message-ID: <007701c411d5$d6e93350$1b1b060a at winonacotter.org>
        Content-Type: text/plain;       charset="Windows-1252"
        
        I use a program called BootIt NG from
        www.terabyteunlimited.com to do my
        multiple boot systems.  For the cost of $40 it makes an
        excellent boot
        manager and a real cool partitioning tool.  Very awesome.  But
        if you
        want to save the $40 I would think you could just partition the
        drive
        into one large drive for your NT install, then a very small
        drive to
        house the image from your etherboot floppy.  My guess would be
        you could
        then copy all the files from the etherboot floppy into the small
        partition, and then load Windows NT on the larger partition.  If
        NT
        doesn't detect it on install and automatically add it to the
        boot.ini,
        just open the boot.ini in notepad and add another line for the
        small
        partition.
        
        [boot loader]
        timeout=30
        default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
        [operating systems]
        multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows
        2000
        Professional" /fastdetect
        multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\LTSP="LTSP Thin Client"
        /fastdetect
        
        Not sure if this would work, but I don't see why it wouldn't.
        
        -----Original Message-----
        From:
        k12osn-bounces at redhat.com [mailto:k12osn-bounces at redhat.com] On
        Behalf Of Doug Gough
        Sent: Wednesday, March 24, 2004 11:34 AM
        To: robark at telus.net; A technical support and discussion
        community for
        users of the K12OS Linux distribution.
        Subject: RE: [K12OSN] boot from local ntfs HD
        
        
        > My lab has Windows NT installed on the clients. I want a dual
        > boot setup. 
        > Instead of using a floppy with rom-o-matic, I want to boot 
        > off the local hard 
        > drives by modifying boot.ini and put the rom-o-matic file on 
        > the hard drive. 
        > I have not done this and would like some help.  I have heard 
        > it's possible 
        > but I don't know if it will work on ntfs. Has anyone done
        this??
        > 
        > Robert
        
        You could run Cygwin on the NT machines and use it to connect to
        the
        K12LTSP server. This would require that the user boot into NT,
        and then
        run Cygwin, and inside Cygwin run xwin with the correct query
        string.
        Most of this could be scripted, I imagine, but it may still be
        too much
        overhead. Still, this sounds like a lot more work than just
        making a
        whack of boot floppies and handing them out at the beginning of
        class.
        
        







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