Baslinux mailing list

[3aoo-cvfd AT dea.spamcon.org]

Andy Ashbaugh wrote:
>
> Unlike BL3 which was happy to boot-up after the install process 
> on a machine with no OS, 

That is true for the floppy version of BL3 (which includes lilo);
however the DOS version of BL3 still requires DOS.

> BL2 seems to need DOS installed in order to become the primary 
> operating system. 

Since the very first version of BL1, BasicLinux has booted from DOS 
(for simplicity).  The use of lilo (instead of DOS) in the floppy 
version of BL3 is something new.
 
> The problem here is that there is no OS currently installed on 
> this box and I don't have any DOS installation disks. 
> Can DOS installation disks be downloaded from somewhere? 

A DOS boot floppy can downloaded from:  bootdisk.com
The floppy will include fdisk and format.  Run fdisk to 
create the DOS partition and make it bootable.  Then execute:
------------
format c: /s
------------
That's all you need to do to install DOS.   

> Can I make BL3 the computer's OS and then switch the boot loader 
> over to BL2? 

lilo needs to be reconfigured every time you change the kernel or 
the location of the root filesystem.  The lilo in BL3 cannot be 
run on BL2 (because BL2 and BL3 use different libraries).

> Is there a procedure for an install that doesn't involve having 
> an OS already installed?

I assume you mean for BL2.  It would be possible to boot the floppy
version of BL2, install BL2 to HD and then install (and configure) 
the lilo package from Slackware 7.1 *before* rebooting.  This would
be quite tricky -- a tiny mistake in your lilo configuration would
make your installation unbootable and you would have to restart with 
the BL2 floppies.  I do not recommend this method for lilo newbies.

A half-pie method would be to boot your HD installation of BL2 from 
a floppy.  You could do this by editing the loadlin.exe line on the 
first BL2 floppy (in autoexec.bat).  Or you could boot the first BL3 
floppy, press CTRL when you see LILO, and redirect it to the HD
partition where BL2 resides.  For example, if BL2 is on /dev/hda2:
-----------------
hd root=/dev/hda2
-----------------

IMHO, the simplest method is to put DOS on the first partition and 
use loadlin.exe to boot Linux.  Eventually, if you wish, you can 
install lilo and remove DOS (once you are sure lilo it is working 
properly).

Cheers,
Steven