From: "Nicholas R LeRoy" <nleroy AT norland DOT com>
Message-Id: <9702101108.ZM13109@dopey>
Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 11:08:47 -0600
In-Reply-To: mharris@blackwidow.saultc.on.ca
        "~OD: RE: [opendos] OpenDOS + Win95 w/FAT32?" (Feb 10,  4:10am)
References: <9702101010 DOT AA06592 AT norsun DOT norland DOT com>
To: opendos AT mail DOT tacoma DOT net
Subject: RE: [opendos] OpenDOS + Win95 w/FAT32?
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> >
> > >                                               Seems *TOO* obvious to
> > >me that that's what we really want.  Build the OpenDOS kernel such that
> > >it understand command line options, etc. like the Linux kernel, and have
> > >the lilo (odlo?) load the kernel from there.  The only thing we really
> > >need that we don't have is a boot sector in the partition (you can't
> > install
> > >lilo on a FAT filesystem) -- obviously an EXT2 would work.
> >
> > I'm of the opinion that we don't need YABL (Yet Another Boot Loader) for
> > OpenDOS.  Grub does a just fine job booting MS-DOS, OpenDOS, Linux, and
> > Windows 95.  If you don't know grub, it's basically lilo, but can be used
> > without Linux.
>
> Well, that explains why people WABL (Want another Boot Loader).
> I haven't used GRUB, however I *have* used LILO and it is not
> very friendly.  It would take no more than a couple hours of
> programming to put an actual MENU into LILO.  Does GRUB have
> this?  If not, then it won't be friendly enough for most DOS
> users IMO.

Fine.  I agree.  Lilo can be a bit intimidating.  From what I've heard,
GRUB is about as friendly as lilo, but works under DOS also.  Let's start
with grub, add some friendlyness (whatever that means) and then some more
intelligence (to load the FS driver, as I was talking about before).  Gives
us a nice small kernel that *everybody* can share and a simple means of
booting using *any* root FS type.

Am I the only person out there who sees this as an elegant (and almost
obvious) solution to the problem?  If I'm alone in this view, then I'll
just drop the whole thing.

I envision something like a grub coming up with a menu -- one of the items
would be "root file system type", from which you select ext2 or FAT or
wthyl (Whatever The Hell You Like).  Click on OK, and it sets up its tables.
Reboot and it loads the kernel, then the fs driver, then boots the kernel
and tells it about the fsdriver.  I see it something like the Linux
command line from lilo:  "fs=address" or something similar.

I suppose it could even be done *by the OS*, something like "fs=physical"
where physical is the physical location of the driver on the disk, but
I think I like the other method better.

In any case, I'm gonna shut up for a while and see if I have any followers.

-Nick


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