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Message-ID: <3C098C08.8BFA5842@charter.net>
Date: Sat, 01 Dec 2001 18:03:52 -0800
From: Ray Davison <raydav AT charter DOT net>
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To: opendos AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: Fdisk and MBR - a question
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Reply-To: opendos AT delorie DOT com

I am not sure if this is relevant to the question, but I have found
System Commander very capable of keeping track of the boot process when
adding operating systems.  My primary machine has long had DRDOS, W95
and OS/2.  I added Linux in free space, and at the next boot it was on
the Sys Cmd menu, and Sys Cmd booted it when selected.  Just do NOT use
Sys Cmd formatting tools.  It created overlapping partitions.  DRDOS
Fdisk is the only tool I have that was able to correct it.

Ray


Thomas A Webb wrote:
> 
> Thanks for the response..
> 
> I suspect you've put your finger on the problem, although the solution
> isn't too clear at this point :-(
> 
> The specific instance was an old 486 with Linux partitions, and if DRDOS
> needs to read what's there in order to replace it, Ill probably have to
> look for another solution. MS-DOS apparently doesn't attempt to
> interpret what's there, because it works fine.
> 
> The problem is this:
> 
> When installing Linux, the mbr needs to be a POBT (Plain old boot
> track). Many of the machines we recycle have had Windoze or os2 on them
> in the past, and we need to be able to start fresh. In addition, there
> are opportunities (several, actually ;-) ) to screw up a Linux
> installation to the extent that it is usefull to start over. MSDOS works
> fine for this, but I can't provide a download utility disk using MSDOS
> because of licensing issues.
> 
> I have found shareware "disk editors" that will do this, but they aren't
> what I would call production tools. I have thought of creating a simple
> utility ( in C ) that would simply pop a new mbr on the drive without
> dragging us through a lot of nonsense, but I was hoping there is a
> simple solution already out there. This is all that is holding up the
> release of SlamDunk Linux procedures, and I would appreciate any
> suggestions.