Baslinux mailing list

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

On Mon, 27 Nov 2006, Karolis Lyvens wrote:

> On Sat, Nov 25, 2006 at 11:05:03PM +0000, sindi keesan wrote:
> > The drive is no longer bootable (it booted in DOS before this). It is
> > active.
> >
> > My neighbor said I need to create a master boot record for Windows.
> >
> > Is there a linux utility to create or correct the MBR?  I found a couple
> > for Windows ($20-100 shareware, 6MB download, and I don't even HAVE
> > Windows working on this computer).

> If you need to clone MBR from hda to hdc (there's only one MBR in whole
> disk, so, AFAIK, you don't need partition number (hda1, hdc1)), then
> the command is:
>
> --
> dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdc bs=512 count=1

I did that and it messed up the second drive, which was a different size 
from the first (larger) so I had to delete the partitions with fdisk and 
remake and reformat.  This was after copying just hda1 to hdc1, where hda1 
was 325MB and the only partition, and hdc1 was 326MB and one of two 
partitions.

 > --
> Or, if you need to create/restore (Windows) MRB, then try the following
> command from, for example, Win98 boot floppy:
>
> --
> fdisk /mbr
> -

This did not seem to work either, because there was nothing to restore?

> (I think that you'll need this command because you'll need Windows MBR)
>
> More information about the "fdisk /mbr" could be found at Micro$oft:
> http://support.microsoft.com/kb/69013
>
> Let us know if either one worked :)


Some web research suggested sys c: with the Win98 boot disk, which did 
work.  We cloned from 340MB to 540MB drive as follows.

Partition and format the second drive with two partitions, the first very 
slightly larger than the 340MB drive (326MB vs 325.5MB).

dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/dev/hdc1 bs=64k

Reboot or shutdown, power off, move hdc to primary master and remove the 
other drive.

Boot with Win98 boot disk, use fdisk to make the first partition active 
(we had done that in the previous experiment too) and then
sys c:  with the Win98 system files.  It booted and worked perfectly, and 
when moved to another case found the new onboard devices and objected to a 
video card with the same S3 Trio32/64 chip and demanded the CD.

The website had suggested copying files with Windows Explorer and mouse, 
with XXcopy, with 'Partition Saving', etc, but always sys c:

The first computer just got picked up by a mother and daughter.  The 
mother recalls playing some of the Atari games we put on as part of a 
60-game DOS collection, such as Pong.  The clone is going to a poor family 
with 4 kids for Christmas via another Freecycle member.  The third person 
who wanted a computer found one by the curb and put on three partitions, 
for DOS 6.22, Windows 7.1 (we don't know how he will boot them both from 
one computer unless by using fdisk to change active partitions) and he 
asked what to put on the third one.  I offered BL.


Problems with Win98 and BL: I used BL2 ramdisk dd on three Win98 computers 
we just made, and BL2 booted fine, but my partner's two Win98 computers 
(IBM and Compaq) won't boot ramdisk BL2, and now one generic DOS 7.1 
standalone computer won't boot it unless he boots without himem.sys. 
Since Win98 always boots with himem.sys even if you take it out of 
config.sys, he had to boot with DOS 7.1 floppy disk to get BL2 ramdisk to 
work.  He is trying to construct a Win98 DOS boot disk without himem.sys 
to test with that.

So himem.sys can mess up more than Xvesa.  'Ran out of input data. 
System halted' is the message, I think.  The IBM and Compaq also won't run 
Xvesa if himem.sys was loaded.  Other X servers work (Mach64 or SVGA).

I also noticed that my scsi kernel (2.4.31) won't boot BL2 ramdisk.  It 
gets as far as INIT:  version 2.76 and stops.  On the scsi computer 
(with DOS and linux on the scsi drive) and on a non-scsi computer, the 
error message being copied from the latter. The non-scsi kernel that 
differs only in m vs y for SCSI module itself, boots fine.  Maybe 
loadlin does not like scsi kernels?

This all came up when my partner asked if he could run BL2 ramdisk from 
USB memory stick.  He can, with zimage, on the IBM and other computers, 
but only if he first boots from a DOS 7.1 floppy boot disk without 
himem.sys, using DOS USB drivers in config.sys, then cd's to the 
USB-memory-stick directory and runs loadlin there.  We have not tried 
booting loop BL3 that way.  The memory sticks come formatted to Fat12 
(64MB, the one he used) and Fat32 (1GB) not linux ext2.  The 64MB one got 
very mixed up when we tried to reformat it and we had to fix the 
crosslinked files and delete some.

Himem.sys was not a problem on three Win98 computers and one DOS 7.1 
computer, just on his three computers.  What luck.  He said Ctrl-Alt-Del 
did not reboot on the generic computer either - just shut down.

Sindi