Re: restoring DOS partition from a tar file (SOLUTION)
On Tuesday 21 October 2003 04:17 pm, you wrote: > On Mon, 20 Oct 2003, Kent Hauser wrote: > > Is it possible to backup a DOS partition (bootable) & restore it from a > > tar file? I recently had a disk failure & used dump/restore on FreeBSD > > partitions & made a tar dump of the DOS one. After "newfs_msdos" & "tar > > x", the partition is not bootable. Is there a way to do this? > > This is actually a really interesting issue. The short answer to this > question is, "no." The long answer is, "I don't really know. Maybe." > I now know how to make this work. And it was a long strange journey. First, when I did "fdisk" & "newfs_msdos" from FreeBSD, neither my W98 SE distribution CD, nor my "Gateway Restore" CD would recognize the drive! (Hardware error, no drive C found.) Then when I delete all partitions, the W98 distribution disk would format the drive & install the OS, but FreeBSD would freeze during the un-tar. (Same result, 2 tries.) I was completely successful when I used the boot CD that came with the Seagate drive (downloadable from http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/drivers/discwiz.html). The "fdisk" and "format" on that CD allowed me to partition and format for W98. I created a bootable floppy which allowed my to "sys" the new C drive. The W98 was bootable. And the "tar" restore from FreeBSD worked fine. My conclusion: The FreeBSD fdisk + newfs_msdos seem to be buggy with regard to creating a primary DOS partition. The seagate tool + bootable W98 floppy allowed me to create bootable W98 partition. The tarfile restored the data. Your mileage may vary as I'm not a very good judge of when W98 is working properly. ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: restoring DOS partition from a tar file
On Mon, 20 Oct 2003, Kent Hauser wrote: > Is it possible to backup a DOS partition (bootable) & restore it from a tar > file? I recently had a disk failure & used dump/restore on FreeBSD partitions > & made a tar dump of the DOS one. After "newfs_msdos" & "tar x", the > partition is not bootable. Is there a way to do this? This is actually a really interesting issue. The short answer to this question is, "no." The long answer is, "I don't really know. Maybe." There are two problems: (Warning: it has been a very very long time since I looked into this. My memory could easily be faulty.) 1) There are two very special files that have to be contiguos and at fixed locations in the file system: the msdos kernel and something else. The something else might have a name similar to "io.sys". These are "hidden" system files. To see them from MSDOS you have to specify a special DIR command option. Normally these files are installed by specifying a special option with the MSDOS FORMAT command or by using a special MSDOS command (possibly the SYS command) that installs a copy of the basic OS from the currently running MSDOS system. There may also be an issue involving the MSDOS command interpreter program (which may be COMMAND.COM or some such thing). 2) MSDOS files may have special attributes that don't map in any obvious way to traditional unix file mode bits. These attributes tend to get lost when you read an MSDOS file system on unix or store MSDOS files in a unix style file archive (e.g. tar, cpio, ...). Fortunately, most MSDOS files don't have any essential special attributes. It might be possible to restore an MSDOS partition from a tar file and then fix it up (make it bootable) with the SYS command when running off an MSDOS floppy. I make backups of my MS OS partitions by making raw copies in unix files. (e.g. "dd if=/dev/ad0s1 of=/wherever/msos_backup bs=128k") You can extract individual files from these backups by mounting pseudo disk devices configured with the vnconfig program on FreeBSD 4.x (or perhaps the mdconfig on FreeBSD 5.x). Dan Strick [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: restoring DOS partition from a tar file
Kent Hauser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Is it possible to backup a DOS partition (bootable) & restore it from a tar > file? I recently had a disk failure & used dump/restore on FreeBSD partitions > & made a tar dump of the DOS one. After "newfs_msdos" & "tar x", the > partition is not bootable. Is there a way to do this? Not from a tar file. I've only needed to do this once, and I used dd. [Plus fdisk(8), I guess...] The other obvious approach is to do a clean and basic DOS install and then restore the tar file on top of it. This won't work as well as you get to more recent versions of Microsoft OS, but I think it should still be possible. ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
