From: mharris AT blackwidow DOT saultc DOT on DOT ca Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 02:36:14 -0500 (EST) Reply-To: mharris AT blackwidow DOT saultc DOT on DOT ca To: OpenDOS discussion list Subject: [opendos] OpenDOS multi-boot success story Message-ID: Organization: Total disorganization. MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-opendos AT mail DOT tacoma DOT net Precedence: bulk Since I installed OD a couple weeks ago, I've been stuck with it. Not that that is a bad thing, but some programs don't work quite right under OD yet so I wanted to dual boot. Several people have suggested different methods of doing this, and I checked out a few of them and have got it to work. I've got System Commander and have got a multi-boot now set up with it. So far I've got OpenDOS and DOS 6.22 set up in it with no apparent problems. Here is what I did. Since OpenDOS renamed the DOS 6.22 kernel files, etc, I renamed them back to IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS. Then I unzipped the System Commander package and read all of the documentation thoroughly. Since installing software to your MBR is a kindof dangerous thing to do, I decided to grab a fresh floppy and make a Norton Rescue disk. My system contains 2 physical drives. Drive 1 is 514M and drive 2 is 850M. Drive 1 contains the following partitions: 1) DOS C: 2) DOS extended (5, 6, 7 below) 3) Linux Native ext2fs (/ - root) 5) DOS E: (logical drive) 6) DOS F: (logical drive) 7) DOS G: (logical drive) Drive 2 contains 1) DOS D: 2) DOS extended (5 and 6 below) 3) Linux Native ext2fs (/usr) 5) DOS H: (logical drive) 6) DOS I: (logical drive) I've got both MSDOS 6.22 *AND* OpenDOS installed onto my C: drive. (C:\DOS and C:\OPENDOS respectively). Both the OpenDOS kernel files and the MSDOS kernel files are residing in my C: root directory. At this point the only problems are: How to pick which OS to boot? And - How to resolve the CONFIG.SYS/AUTOEXEC.BAT problems. Well, after doing the Norton Rescue, I backed up ALL of my configuration files for DOS/OPENDOS/WINDOWS, and then I installed System Commander. I fiddled around with it for a while to try and figure everything out, and then picked my OpenDOS configuration. OpenDOS booted straight and clean, just like a charm. I hit reset and got the System Commander (refered to as SC from now on) menu. I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to get DOS 6.22 to boot though. I figured that SC needed to somehow capture a DOS 6.22 MBR though so I booted clean off of the DOS 6.22 installation disks and did a SYS C:. I feared that this might cause HD problems or destroy SC, however I tried it anyway. At this point I figured that I'd now be able to set up 6.22 on the SC menu and then boot it ok, but that OD probably wouldn't work anymore. Well, upon rebooting, I found out that I was right. The DOS 6.22 SYS command toasted the OpenDOS kernel files. :o) Upon reboot, SC detected that a new OS was installed and let me add it to the menu. I then booted into 6.22 (from SC) and did an UNDELETE which recovered the OpenDOS kernel files. Now when I rebooted, I could pick either OS and they would both boot, but now they were sharing CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT. I rebooted and went into the SC boot menu again and went into setup. I picked the FILE somethingorother menu where it lets you pick which files get renamed/copied so that each OS can have it's own AUTOEXEC.BAT, etc. I set ALL entries to "NONE" so that SC didn't copy ANY files at all. At this point I could have let SC take care of renaming the files and resolving the CONFIG.SYS/AUTOEXEC.BAT/COMMAND.COM problems, however I decided to do it another way. Since I don't use COMMAND.COM anyway, I put the DOS 6.22 COMMAND.COM into the C:\DOS\ directory where it belongs. I did the same with the OPENDOS COMMAND.COM (C:\OPENDOS\). I then called my OpenDOS CONFIG.SYS "DCONFIG.SYS", and my OpenDOS AUTOEXEC.BAT "OPENEXEC.BAT". Then I deleted the directories that SC made to store those files for each OS. (MSDOS6.22, NWDOS7.00) and then I made sure that DCONFIG.SYS, CONFIG.SYS, OPENEXEC.BAT, and AUTOEXEC.BAT were the proper files that they were supposed to be. I then edited my DCONFIG.SYS and put a command line switch on my SHELL= line to tell the command interpreter to use a file called OPENEXEC.BAT instead of AUTOEXEC.BAT. (SHELL=C:\OPENDOS\COMMAND.COM /P:C:\OPENEXEC.BAT) or (SHELL=C:\4DOS\4DOS.COM /P:C:\OPENEXEC.BAT) Now, I rebooted. I picked OpenDOS from SC, and it started up beautifully. DCONFIG.SYS and OPENEXEC.BAT were parsed as expected. I rebooted again and picked 6.22. CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT worked as expected too. The result is that now I can boot either OS easily. So far neither interferes with the other. Problems: 1) I use QEMM 8.0 in MSDOS 6.22 and I have the Quarterdeck Quickboot feature of QEMM turned on. Unfortunately System commander comes up right away instead of 6.22 rebooting itself. Is there a way to make System commander only come up after a hard RESET? 2) Since I use Linux, the only way that I can get into Linux now is to boot 6.22 and run LOADLIN. (Which is my normal method anyways.) However, I would much rather boot Linux from System Commander now. Anyone know how to boot Linux from System Commander directly? Do I need to somehow install LILO on my native Linux BS? Or can I have SC directly run LOADLIN itself? Other than these 2 VERY minor problems (that don't actually have anything to do with DOS anyway) I'm pretty satisfied with my multiboot setup right now. I'm also interested in hearing what other people's experiences with SC and OpenDOS have been. I hope that this will help others to get a multiboot setup up and running. TTYL Mike A. Harris | http://blackwidow.saultc.on.ca/~mharris Computer Consultant | My webpage has moved and my address has changed. My dynamic address: http://blackwidow.saultc.on.ca/~mharris/ip-address.html mailto:mharris AT blackwidow DOT saultc DOT on DOT ca RHIDE: Current version 1.10