Hello, > On Apr 18, 2021, at 12:27 PM, Eric Auer <e.a...@jpberlin.de> wrote: > > > Hi! > >> I never managed to install Freedos on a harddisk via the “live CD 1.3” or >> 1.2 version (image). > > There are two problems: 1. where the installer expects the packages > in terms of drive letters and 2. whether you can partition the disk > to create a primary LBA FAT partition, format it and make it bootable.
The installer does not care what drive letter has the packages. It checks all possible drive letters in an attempt to locate the packages needed for installation. > > >> a working install ( I still have no idea what I did wrong that Freedos >> 1.3. live, and Freedos 1.2 standard CDs never worked for me > > Even that is a bit complicated. DOS used to be rather "manual" in both > use and install. So I would be okay with getting dropped to a prompt on > booting from CD or USB and then having to use FDISK, FORMAT, SYS, COPY > and similar commands to kick DOS to a built-in harddisk, SSD or eMMC. > > Understandably, the installer tries to make that easier, but fails to > cover enough possible situations in which it could end up. For example, > Linux installers are able to find and resize existing Windows installs > on MBR or GPT partitioned disks to share your computer between Windows > and Linux without breaking the existing Windows. The installer simply > asks whether it should keep or delete Windows and everything else will > happen automatically. That would be way beyond the abilities of FreeDOS. This does not appear to be related to his problem installing 1.2 or 1.3-RC4. He said … >> • I never managed to install Freedos on a harddisk via the “live CD >> 1.3” or 1.2 version (image). All of them just stopped in telling me >> “packages not found”. There is only one reason for that message. The installer could not locate the packages. That primarily happens when the CD/DVD driver was unable to initialize the CD/DVD-ROM drive for whatever reason. Without functioning support for the the CD/DVD drive, the CD should still boot. That is not handled by a CD/DVD driver in FreeDOS. It is handled through the system BIOS and (depending on which CD) also SYSLINUX/MEMDISK. Once the CD has booted, the installer should be able to partition and format the hard drive. However, the installer requires access to the remainder of the CD-ROM to install the packages. So, It can proceed no further than those steps without the CD/DVD driver supporting them. Also… Things like resizing partitions and GPT support aren’t actually an issue with the installer. I am not aware of any utilities to support such things under FreeDOS. If and when they become available, they might be added to the list of utilities employed by the installer to include such functionality during the install process. On a side note… RC4 is only days away. It uses a different method when attempting to initialize the CD/DVD ROM. It will attempt using several drivers. RC4 also includes the Floppy Edition. The Floppy Edition uses a completely different installer and does not require CD/DVD support. Jerome _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
