Hello intelligent Linuxers,

Out of curiosity, can you chainload a Linux system via a Windows executable within Windows at the ordinary desktop?

Knowing windows there would be enough holes to write at any memory address without "permission", but can it be done with a humble executable? Or is Windows just too active, without the chance of nothing happening at any one point so that everything can be exited cleanly non-existent?

I'm not asking for a program or guide to do this and neither do I aim to do it. As I've stated it is all out of curiosity on whether or not some sort of protection is in place to stop this kind of thing.

If I wanted to hijack a Windows system I'd just use a firewire port anyway...

Regards, William

I have never heard of something like this---either from Windows to Linux or the other way.

It would be called a virtual machine.

Ubuntu does provide a variant whereby it is installed wholly inside a MS system. It is called Portable Ubuntu.

You get Linux to work as a guest system inside a host which is the MS system.

For older Windows (95,98,Me) there was loadlin that would do this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loadlin
Another approach is that used by Cygwin. http://cygwin.com/ It is very useful to me for the ability to ssh (with X11 forwarding) to a Linux box and also for access to *nix text tools such as awk, grep and sed.

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Wow, thankyou. Loadlin was exactly what I was posting about. It is a shame it is no-longer usable now with the NT era.

Cygwin + bash = winash

Thanks Allend.

Chainloading and VMs have nothing in common, unless you use grub in your vm. Chainloading is where the current program/os replaces itself with another in the same memory area. VMs just nest OS's within each other, in different memory areas but with the second running in an emulated environment so it (mostly) thinks it is the main and only OS.

I think Loadlin works in real mode as a Dos program operating in a command prompt. If it has a desktop version then I never ran into it. The Windows has to be shut down in order to boot up the kernel which has to be made available in the Loadlin directory or at those days conatined inside a floppy. Loadlin is exactly waht its name implies to "Load Linux". It might has its place before LIlo and Grub were fully developed.

The Grub4Dos system is possibly a newer equivalent.

Chainloading is a term used by one boot loader to boot another boot loader.