Date: Wed, 20 Jan 1999 14:38:14 +0100
From: Matthias Paul <PAUL-MA AT reze-1 DOT rz DOT rwth-aachen DOT de>
Subject: Re: batch file help
To: opendos AT delorie DOT com
Message-id: <C07F76D2BF4@reze-1.rz.rwth-aachen.de>
Organization: Rechenzentrum RWTH Aachen
X-Mailer: Pegasus Mail v3.22
Reply-To: opendos AT delorie DOT com

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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eMail: <Matthias DOT Paul AT post DOT rwth-aachen DOT de>
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