Grub booting from fat 16
 

Hello all of you,

Unfortunately I have 2 programs, that run only on windows, so on one of my boxes I have to keep a windows version with those programs. Since those programs are rather important to me, I make backups on a dailey basis. I also make a full backup from the partition (just in case - if you have the partition you can restart much quicker). This is a very annoying thing. First you have to start up the back-up program. Windows must restart and the program starts in dos, makes a backup and then you have to shut it down manually again and win restarts.

I want to automate the thing in the following way.

On this system I have ubuntu in a second partition. And grub as bootloader.

I want to make a third partition (2gb) fat16.
Then I copy all the Grub stuff (/boot/grub a.s.o.) in this partition.
I copy the grub menu.lst to menu.win and menu.lin
In menu.win I set the start on win.
In menu.lin linux will start.

I make a batchfile that makes an nice backup from the win partition at start up and then deletes menu.lst and makes a copy from menu.win to menu.lst at Linux and restarts.

Now I can set the boot record to this fat16 partition.

Next time the system boots, win will start.

In win I make a batch to delete menu.lst and copy menu.lin to menu.lst.
Next instruction is to shut down and restart.

The system will now start up in Linux and make the backup - change the menu.lst - and restart.

After restart it comes up again in win.

If this is possible my backup problem is over, and I can do it unattended.

Did I miss anything or is there perhaps a more simple way.

CloudBuilder

cloud....IMHO a simple way would just run win from a linux box using some form of emulator hypervisor etc....I recommend virtualbox as it is very easy to setup communication between host and virtual machine if you want cd access usb ...net etc

fat16 suggests to me either you are running a w95 or w3.1.1

An emulator is no option, it is very specialized software.
I was thinking of VMware, but that is also a lot of overhead. The way I pointed out is very simple. I have already linux on the system and a tiny partition is not a problem.

I use XP but since I only need a very small HD (only grub components) 2gb will do. XP can handle fat, linux can and there is not a lot of overhead in fat16.

I have already found an article about a red head install on fat. I don't need a full install. Just /boot/grub will do [ I only have to prevent that it tries to start the partition (-: isn't it?]

It is not so good from the protection point I understand, but since I am the only user of the box.....

CloudBuilder

fair enough here is another idea.

since its fat....and you already agree XP and linux support it....a linux live cd will support it...and instead of using a backup program you can use www.partimage.org.

I do this all the time...the speed of the live cd boot up can be sped up by using a minimal window manager or console style...the first time you do it you may prefer a highly graphical cd like knoppix. here is PI started in graphical (2d) mode
http://www.partimage.org/Partimage-manual_Usage

if you have no spare room on your partitions you can copy image to a media
http://www.sysresccd.org/Sysresccd-m...by_mounting_it

You may already realise you can do the same for your other partitions.

(thats not how I do it tho..I save to spare spare partition and then use k3b to burn to a dvdrw)

2) saving image is slower and restoring is faster....to give you an idea I restore about 3G in 3 minutes about 400 megs/min write speed...depends on your hardware and I think on how full your disk is.

3) no images should be saved for msoft unless they have been defragged

Thank you AUS9, that is also a good option.

I can try both and look what suits me best.

Thank you for your reply.

CloudBuilder