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Use grub4dos as boot loader, load UBCD.ISO from USB disk

Posted: Sun Jun 22, 2008 10:57 pm
by ilko
First off- thanks for all the work in this project, great work!

Goal- build UBCD ISO with grub4dos GRLDR for loader.
This ISO can be placed on USB disk and booted directly from grub4dos:

Code: Select all

title UBCD 4.11
find --set-root  /ubcd411.iso
map /ubcd411.iso (hd32)
map --hook
root (hd32)
chainloader (hd32)
Convert syslinux menus to grub4dos ones. Most of them were tested and working.
Here is the post with details:
http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.p ... st&p=38234

You can find attached all menus converted to grub4dos ones. Further tests needed.

Grub4dos can be easily installed on the USB disk, or started by chainloading GRLDR from almost any other boot loader- NTLDR, SYSLINUX, LILO, GNU GRUB as well as started from DOS.

Later on, returning from DOS program to main menu, without reboot in many cases is possible, by executing grub.exe, as long as a driver doesn't interfere.

No need of separate syslinux/isolinux menus and files.

Do you think it's worth switching the main releases to grub4dos? What would be disadvantages?

Suggestion- do not use directory BOOT and IMAGES, rename it to something unique to UBCD :- )
In case of multiboot, when ISO emulation is not used, it becomes tricky to have more stuff on the CD/USB. And directories BOOT/IMAGES are among the most often used.

BTW after a recent request, PartedMagic now can be booted from grub4dos directly by loading it's ISO:
http://partedmagic.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=151

Hopefully more and more distros will become bootable in this convenient way, will UBCD be among them? :roll:

Posted: Wed Jun 25, 2008 7:10 am
by Victor Chew
This is an interesting idea. I will KIV it for evaluation in a future release, since I am too tied up right now in V5.0.
Suggestion- do not use directory BOOT and IMAGES, rename it to something unique to UBCD :- )
In V5.0, UBCD will be isolated to its own subdirectory. Check out the beta release.

Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2008 12:54 pm
by ilko
Donwloaded the beta version, going to look at it.

A question- when loading floppy images via syslinux memdisk, what does the kernel parameter 'ubcdcmd=' do?

hdd2.cfg:
LABEL fujitsu
MENU LABEL Diagnostic Tool V6.90 (Fujitsu)
KERNEL memdisk
APPEND initrd=/images/dosubcd.igz ubcdcmd=fujitsu
LABEL samsung
MENU LABEL SHDIAG V1.25 (Samsung)
KERNEL memdisk
APPEND initrd=/images/dosubcd.igz ubcdcmd=samsung

Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2008 1:00 pm
by Icecube
e.g.: ubcdcmd=samsung
When the freedos image is booted up, startup.bat from the /ubcd/dosapps/samsung/ folder will be executed.

Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2008 11:31 pm
by Icecube
The freedos image (dosubcd.igz) gets this parameter from memdisk by the program getargs.com.
http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~gmurali/ ... loads.html

If you want that you can use grub4dos floppy emulation for booting dosubcd.igz with a command line parameter, you have to write (or ask) a similar dos program for grub4dos, which is able to read out the command line parameters which are passed to the kernel command line.

If you can give us such a program, we can include it in the freedos image.