Mail Archives: opendos/1999/01/20/08:43:40
On Tue, 19 Jan 1999 <Bobbitchin AT hempseed DOT com> wrote:
> I need to set up an automated install of DR-Dos and Newdeal School
> suite.
> [...]
> Is there an easy way to tell if the HDD is already fdisked and formated
> with DR-dos so I can have the batch skip step 2 after rebooting when
> exiting fdisk?
Hm, this is an ad-hoc solution (untested, might need improvement):
@ECHO off
IF EXIST a:\semaphor.log GOTO continue
REM If the following query causes a critical error due to an
REM unformatted disk, try suppressing COMMAND.COM s critical
REM error handler using its Fail option in CONFIG.SYS, e.g.:
REM SHELL=a:\command.com /F /P
IF EXIST c:\ibmbio.com GOTO skip
ECHO > a:\semaphor.log
FDISK < a:\keyfile.lst
REM FDISK should reboot here, otherwise we could force a reboot
REM using 4DOS REBOOT command or a DEBUG script...
PAUSE Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to reboot your machine.
:continue
IF EXIST a:\semaphor.log DEL a:\semaphor.log > \dev\nul
REM Using MS-DOS FDISK requires the following instead:
REM FORMAT c: /S
SYS c:
:skip
If the "IF EXIST c:\ibmbio.com" still causes problems, there are
more sophisticated methods to solve that problem, e.g. reading
and analyzing the harddisk s MBR to see if it s formatted.
This can be done using DR-DOS DEBUG s quite powerful scripting
facilities, but first let s see if the simple approach doesn t
solve your problem already...
> How about a way to automate FDISK?
As shown above, you can use input redirection to feed DR-DOS FDISK
with simulated keystrokes, e.g.
FDISK < keyfile.dat
However, since the numbers assigned to the various options may vary
depending on the drive s current status, this can be dangerous in
some situations (since Novell DOS 7, FDISK takes some precautions
to avoid the most serious mistakes, but it s still VERY dangerous).
On the other hand, there s nothing to loose if you only perform this
on non-initialized disks.
MS-DOS 7 FDISK and OS/2 FDISK have a bunch of command line options
to automate the process of partitioning, but you will have to
run FORMAT afterwards.
> How about a way to cause a reboot at the end?
If necessary FDISK will usually force a reboot by itself.
Otherwise you can use 4DOS REBOOT, or a simple DEBUG script.
Matthias
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Matthias Paul, Ubierstrasse 28, D-50321 Bruehl, Germany
eMail: <Matthias DOT Paul AT post DOT rwth-aachen DOT de>
Web : http://www.rhrz.uni-bonn.de/~uzs180/mpdokeng.html
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