Hi Bob, not sure about your plans but... How about installing DOS directly to some disk / SD / USB / CF without ISO?
To boot DOS with isolinux, you have to use memdisk, a bootable ramdisk which initially loads a diskimage and which boots as if it would be a Linux kernel with some initrd image from the view of isolinux. You can do the same with syslinux from any FAT drive and you can boot DOS directly from any FAT drive, too. To put a FreeDOS on a FAT drive from within Linux, you can use my Perl script which compiles and puts the boot sector for you as described by Alain. Do not forget to put the files as well, just the usual way: Mount the disk, copy some kernel.sys + config.sys + autoexec.bat + command.com and all other files that you would like on the disk... I guess you can also install isolinux as a package on Fedora to get the isolinux files somewhere where you can copy them from, or download from the syslinux page. In general, you can get info about individual FreeDOS tools on http://www.freedos.org/software/ including URLs. All tools come, among other packagings, as ZIP with binary (and in newer ZIPs, source: In older ZIPs the source is a separate ZIP download) in a directory structure which allows you to unzip all tools in one c:freedos tree and still have them nicely organized. >> 1) Program needed: NASM, which I got from Debian >> $ sudo apt-get install nasm >> >> 2) program from Eric for the boot sector: >> <http://ericauer.cosmodata.virtuaserver.com.br/soft/specials/sys-freedos-linux.zip> >> >> create a directory ./sys-freedos-linux and expand it there This program contains the various FreeDOS boot sectors (FAT12, 16 or 32, LBA or CHS) and compiles and installs them for you on any disk or diskimage of your choice. >> 3) create file of the right size. 5760k was ok for me, there is some >> magic in the size and not everything will be ok. (more studies needed) >> $ dd if=/dev/zero of=FreeDOS.img count=11520 >> 11520+0 records in >> 11520+0 records out >> 5898240 bytes (5.9 MB) copied, 0.408512 s, 14.4 MB/s You can also use any existing FAT drive or diskimage here. >> 4) Prepare it with a FAT file system >> $ sudo mkdosfs -v FreeDOS.img If you use an existing drive or diskimage, you do not HAVE to format it. Of course you can, if you want to have a fresh start... >> mkdosfs 3.0.1 (23 Nov 2008) >> FreeDOS.img has 64 heads and 32 sectors per track, >> logical sector size is 512, >> using 0xf8 media descriptor, with 11520 sectors; >> file system has 2 12-bit FATs and 4 sectors per cluster. >> FAT size is 9 sectors, and provides 2867 clusters. >> Root directory contains 512 slots. >> Volume ID is 0cbb7ca7, no volume label. >> >> 5) compile and write a suitable boot sector. This is a smart script by >> Eric Auer that configures it with the appropiate parameters >> $ ./sys-freedos-linux/sys-freedos.pl --disk=FreeDOS.img >> DOS boot sector for FreeDOS.img will be created by: >> nasm -o /dev/stdout -dISFAT12 >> ./sys-freedos-linux/bootsecs/boot.asm >> Using FAT12. Partn offset 0, CHS *x64x32 Drive 0, (0x0, 0x29), >> SerNo CBB-7CA7, Strings ' ', 'FAT12 '. >> Boot sector successfully updated. NOTE: If you use a PARTITION instead of an unpartitioned drive which only contains the filesystem, the OFFSET of that partition must be set properly. This is usually the case for partitions formatted by DOS or Windows and for e.g. pre-formatted FAT32 USB sticks and similar, but not always for partitions formatted with mkdosfs, depending on whether mkdosfs can access enough context information. Not sure about partitions made and formatted by GPARTED. You can also use my script to manually change the offset if you KNOW that it was NOT already set right, but that involves extra manual calculations by you. >> 6) mount it in a directory >> $ mkdir bootimg >> $ sudo mount -v -o loop,uid=you,gid=you FreeDOS.img bootimg If you use a physical HDD/CF/USB/SD, just re-connect it or similar if you do not want to use mount manually... >> 7) copy into it KERNEL.SYS, COMMAND.COM and all other files All other files means at least config.sys and autoexec.bat :-) >> 8) use it just the same way then the image made from a floppy, memdisk >> will recognize it. I used isolinux, here is how I created the iso: >> $ mkisofs -R -v -A "FreeDOS big boot CD" -V FreeDOS-V1.x \ >> -b isolinux/isolinux.bin -c isolinux/boot.cat \ >> -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table \ >> -o /mnt/dados/Segurver/FreeDOS-V1.x.iso \ >> /mnt/dados/CDROM In this example, you provide isolinux.bin to mkisofs as boot menu. I think the boot.cat is automatically created by mkisofs. The file after -o is the output ISO image and the directory at the end is where you take the files to put on the CD / DVD / BD ISO from. You can experiment much easier when you use a rewriteable CD or DVD. An ALTERNATIVE method is to create or modify a boot FLOPPY image. Only certain sizes (1.2M, 1.44M, 2.88M) are possible then. You can use a real floppy as template or an image. If you do not want to mount the image, or are not root and cannot, just use "mtools" to "mcopy" files around etc. Many graphical CD/DVD burning tools let you select a boot floppy image for making a disk bootable. Note that your boot floppy then has to contain all CD / ... drivers if you want to use not only the files on the "floppy" but also those on the "outer" CD / ... after you boot the whole thing to DOS. Regards, Eric ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! 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