Loading DOS by GRUB without NT-loader?

JZL240I-U · 09-28-2005, 04:21 AM

I'm currently triple-booting with GRUB in the MBR the master boot-loader. It can call the NT-loader which in turn can call DOS.

DOS resides in hda1, NT in hda2 (ntldr in hda1 of course), Linux in hdb5.

The boot.ini of NT uses just C:\ to call on DOS. What "stanza" would do the trick for GRUB? Just calling on hd(0,0) already gets the NT-loader...

Anybody knows the trick? Thanks in advance

.

bigrigdriver · 09-28-2005, 09:24 PM

Perhaps this will help.

JZL240I-U · 09-29-2005, 02:28 AM

Thank you for the link (should have looked myself

), I'll certainly try it.

My lingering suspicion is, though, that the NT-loader will grab the show, since it is in the DOS partition, but testing will show. I'll return with the results...

JZL240I-U · 10-07-2005, 01:58 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by JZL240I-U
...My lingering suspicion is, though, that the NT-loader will grab the show, since it is in the DOS partition, but testing will show. I'll return with the results...

Yup, that's exactly what happened, the NT-loader poked its dirty nose to the fore

.

Obviously the microsoft loader(s) are so much intertwined, that GRUB can't seperate them with normal measures. Question remains, though, can GRUB do it at all? Anyone with ideas?

Quote:

from the link posted above
Another problem arises if you installed more than one set of DOS/Windows onto one disk, because they could be confused if there are more than one primary partitions for DOS/Windows. Certainly you should avoid doing this, but there is a solution if you do want to do so. Use the partition hiding/unhiding technique.

If GRUB hides a DOS (or Windows) partition (see hide), DOS (or Windows) will ignore the partition. If GRUB unhides a DOS (or Windows) partition (see unhide), DOS (or Windows) will detect the partition. Thus, if you have installed DOS (or Windows) on the first and the second partition of the first hard disk, and you want to boot the copy on the first partition, do the following:

Code:

     grub> unhide (hd0,0)
     grub> hide (hd0,1)
     grub> rootnoverify (hd0,0)
     grub> chainloader +1
     grub> makeactive
     grub> boot

I put the above stanza into the /boot/grub/menu.lst (omitting the "boot" command). Now Win-NT crashes and Linux gets a Kernel panic, even though I deleted this stanza promptly ...