Mail Archives: opendos/2002/05/30/04:05:24
Ah, you have "sparked up" some faded neurons! <g>
Yes, as I recall, earlier versions of Ontrack Disk Manager did offset the
effective location of the MBR (rest of disk, really) as you have described.
I believe this was the reason for incompatibility with earlier versions of
LILO and/or Linux.
Current versions of Ontrack DM/DDO can be installed this way too, but
as an alternative, can use a conventional disk format without offsetting.
In the latter instance, the MBR contains a bootstrap for the remainder
of the DDO, which resides in some further sectors in cylinder 0. The
boot sector is in the usual place, sector 1 of cylinder 1. When I installed
DM, I elected to use this more conventional format, and created one
partition from the first 1024 cylinders, two further logical partitions in
the
remainder of the disk. This choice made it possible, if the need arose,
to boot from a standard boot disk, and at least have normal access to
the first partition (access to all partitions would require loading the DDO,
either booting from the hard disk or from a special boot disk). I felt this
was a safer approach, particularly if for some reason the DDO became
corrupt (or I forgot about it's "press space bar to boot from floppy"
feature).
So perhaps as you suggest, the unconventional DM format is what
people need to use, if they want to use LILO without losing the DDO.
Oh well, too late to "start over" now (not sure if I'd want to do things
differently anyway). I'll just have to rely on an LBA-aware BIOS from
now on (or remember where I've put the special boot disk with DDO),
in order to use LILO.
Joe.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ben A L Jemmett [SMTP:ben DOT jemmett AT ukonline DOT co DOT uk]
> Sent: Wednesday, May 29, 2002 5:36 PM
> To: opendos
> Subject: Re: DOS/Linux coexistence (was: [Club Dr-DOS])
>
> > So, I wonder, has anyone been able to
> > install LILO and retain Ontrack's MBR/DDO or is this possibility a myth?
>
> I think I've done it in the past (it's been a fair few years since I had
> to
> use Ontrack DDO though; when I upgraded to a mobo with an LBA-aware BIOS
> the
> need disappeared, but I kept it since it couldn't be uninstalled easily.
> Then when a disk infected with Stoned.NYB was left in the drive and
> overwrote the DDO code...). The DDO code in the MBR can only be seen
> before
> the DDO loads -- after that, it presents a standard MBR to the world. So
> if
> one boots Linux by hitting Space at the prompt, then installs LILO to the
> MBR or boot sector, it works. At least, it did back in 1996...
>
> Regards,
> Ben A L Jemmett.
> (http://web.ukonline.co.uk/ben.jemmett/, http://www.deltasoft.com/)
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