Baslinux mailing list

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

Regarding a computer where loadlin will no longer work even with Win;98 
DOS (which fixed five others).  Syslinux booted.  It looks about as easy 
to set up as lilo and supposedly installs something to the boot record of 
a DOS floppy disk (except SW81 formatted the floppy disk with lilo to 
1.68MB) and you need to put the kernel on the floppy disk and a config 
file telling it what to boot.  So we have a way to boot but can syslinux 
be installed to the DOS hard drive?  The kernel goes into a DOS directory 
rather than a linux directory, unlike lilo.  You type syslinux a: (or 
syslinux /dev/fd0) and it puts ldlinux.sys on the DOS disk and something 
in the boot record of the disk.  IT booted to hdb1 from teh floppy disk.

> Presumably syslinux is another way to boot and we will try to access SW81 
> with it (and if that works we could also install lilo at that time).  Can you 
> use syslinux to boot from DOS, like loadlin?

I don't think we actually went into DOS with the boot disk, tho the disk 
is readable in DOS.  We cannot do a diskcopy of it in DOS.  It does give 
us a way to choose where to boot from, including which kernel.

> What exactly can lilo do to damage the partition?  Is this software or 
> hardware damage?  It is one of our larger nicer drives.
>
> I know this is not exactly basliclinux but the computer will probably end up 
> with basiclinux eventually if it can be made to boot linux, and syslinux 
> might be handy for other people when loadlin does not work.  Hal has two such 
> computers and I now have four.  Everything else seems to work on them (except 
> that the Gateway does not like FreeDOS, but neither does another Gateway 
> which runs loadlin just fine).
>
> keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org
> SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org
> _______________________________________________
> BasLinux mailing list
> BasLinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/baslinux

keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org