On Mon, 19 Feb 1996, Steve Phillips wrote: > How does one install to a UMSDOS partition instead of an ext2 pertition? > Has anyone ever done this? > > --
I've just completed it - but it was messy for unknown reasons - and I'd be interested in hearing other approaches/experiences. Fist, put umsdos.o and umssync, the umsdos utility from sunsite on a DOS disk. Boot from the install boot/root disks and escape to a shell. Mount the DOS disk and load umsdos. Mount /dev/hda1 as type umsdos to /root. Now the fun begins... I tried two alternatives: umssync /root to setup the umsdos files, exit back to the setup menu to install and configure the base stuff. Umsdos wants to start life in /linux. So, I "mv'ed" all the directories to /linux. Unfortunately a number of files - ld.so for one and /sbin/init for another - got corrupted with the move. Trying to fix the umsdos files names seemed to be too big a trial. (Why would the files names get corrupted? Certain directories, /lib and /sbin, got a big hit.) So on to alternative two. mkdir /hd and mount -t umsdos /dev/hda1 /hd. Now mkdir /hd/linux (where things should be in the first place) and rm /root and ln -s /hd/linux /root. Umssync /hd/linux. The debian setup assumes the file destination is in /root. Unfortunately the setup tests df to see the /root is MOUNTED. So, the rest becomes running a few lines from dinstall by hand. Look at dinstall for the exact sequence but it's something like: mount -o ro -t msdos /dev/fd0 /mnt; cd /mnt; ./install.sh to mount the boot disk and load some stuff. Then cd /hd/linux; floppy_merge /dev/fd0 | gunzip | cpio --extract to get the 3 base disks installed. There are 4 dsetup_* commands to configure everything (from /sbin). dsetup_mod hung on me but i didn't need the module stuff setup so I rebooted and skipped that one. Finally, you need a vmlinuz with umsdos compiled in which I made on another debian machine. I use loadlin to boot from the DOS command line (Win'95 is also installed). I suffered a number of floppy disk hangs for unknown reasons and nothing seemed to repeatable except the /lib & /sbin file name corruptions. But the system does work now. I have one last problem - emacs will not install. dpkg-deb complains that it cannot delete a file that's not there and the emacs/lisp directory is corrupted! more to do... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Paul Kirschner #include <disclaimer.std> [EMAIL PROTECTED] United Technologies Research Center
