Baslinux mailing list

[sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>]

On Sun, 31 Oct 2004, James Miller wrote:

> On Mon, 1 Nov 2004, sindi keesan wrote:
>
> > Win9X DOS, DR-DOS 7.03, or PC-DOS --- and only FreeDOS would boot.
> > Someone else had it working with Windows NT before that.  We got linux to
> > work first with lilo (lilo on floppy disk) and then discovered FreeDOS
> > would boot so we could use loadlin.  SBM (smart boot manager) let us boot
> > DamnSmallLinux from a CD-ROM with lilo too.  But FreeDOS messes up Xvesa,
> > says Hal, which leaves us either no Xvesa or needing to use lilo.   Will
> > SBM let me choose between FreeDOS and lilo (BL2 or BL3)?
>
> For SBM to boot Linux, you need to have lilo installed in the superblock
> (sorry, don't know what that means, but I know that's how they say it) of
> the partition it resides in.  This means something like it gets installed
> to the first sectors of the partition, rather than to the mbr of the
> drive.  Once you do that, sbm can boot linux fine.  My FreeDOS does *not*
> mess up Xvesa.  I created a menu, with one item being "boot BL3:" that
> item also bypasses memory management stuff.  In my experience, bypassing
> memeory management stuff in FreeDOS allows Xvesa to run normally.  So,
> it's alot like later versions of M$DOS in that respect.  I never reported
> this to the FreeDOS team, but they might well be willing to work out what
> the issues are if someone reports this as a bug.
>
> James

If I am going to need to use a menu to choose between FreeDOS with and 
without himem.sys, and then use loadlin, I would need to reboot FreeDOS to 
switch from using DOS programs to FreeDOS without himem sys in order to 
use linux with Xvesa.  It might be simpler in that case to use SBM/lilo if 
I expect to do a lot with Xvesa.  Can I install BL's and FreeDOS with a
config.sys menu and then add SBM/lilo later if I end up wanting to use 
Xvesa often?

It would be lovely if FreeDOS himem.sys would not interferre with Xvesa 
and then we could all use it instead of other DOSes (except on a few odd 
computers that will only boot linux loadlin with Win9X DOS and I don't 
expect FreeDOS to worry about those exceptions.)  So yes please do report 
this as a bug which prevents the use of linux with opensource DOS.