hi,

at present i have a windows box in my cluches. at a certain time i would like the box to re-boot into a linux mode let it run some diag stuff and then re-boot into windows all automatically.

i can get the windows thing to re-boot when ever i want, however i am unsure how to get the box to jump into linux.

so i thought this may be a good idea:

1. the time comes for a re-boot
2. the current windows Bootloader is copied out into a backup file on to a dedicated partition.
3. the linux bootloader ( probably lilo ) is copied from the dedicated partition to the MBR of the disk.
4. the machine re-boots into linux and does its stuff

and then when done re-does the above ( but points 2 and 3 are swapped around and changed respectivly )


now if possible all this needs to happen without user intervention.

can the boot sector/MBR be copied using just the dd command? if so, any ideas?

thanks

It might be easier to use grub as your bootloader. Grub is easier to use than lilo because you have to rewrite the MBR whenever you change lilo.conf but you don't have to rewrite the MBR when you change grub.conf.

___________________________________
Be prepared. Create a LifeBoat CD.
http://users.rcn.com/srstites/LifeBo...home.page.html

Steve Stites

Then how would you automatically boot back to linux? Windows can't modify the grub.conf unless its on a FAT32 partition.

You would need a console windows app of some kind to write a file to the MBR.

dd if=/dev/hda of=mbr.bin bs=512 count=1

If your booting from hda.

What version of windows? With Windows 98 you can create a boot floppy disk with a config.sys menu and use loadlin for linux. Then either OS could modify the floppy disk. However, this method will not work for XP or W2K.

"Then how would you automatically boot back to linux? Windows can't modify the grub.conf unless its on a FAT32 partition. "

You could try making grub.conf a symbolic link to a file on a FAT32 partition. I don't know if grub is smart enough to handle a symbolic link or not. You could experiment and see.

___________________________________
Be prepared. Create a LifeBoat CD.
http://users.rcn.com/srstites/LifeBo...home.page.html

Steve Stites

The filesystem with the symbolic link has to be mounted before it would work.
if it would work.

This absolutely would not work as easy as youd expect.

From the Lilo man page:

-R command line
This option sets the default command for the boot loader the next time it executes. The boot loader will then erase this line: this is a once-only command. It is typically used in reboot scripts, just before calling `shutdown -r'. Used without any arguments, it will cancel a lock-ed or fallback command line.

I haven't tried it. Maybe it is what you want?