I need help with an ancient DOS problem
root
bootable CDs that could boot into DOS 6.0, Newdos,
and such. I remember that when I made the bootable
CD from a bootable floppy I had to jump through some
hoops which included copying (equivalent to dd) the
floppy to a file bootimage on the CD. That bootimage
had a number of EXE files that I thought would suffice
for any future use.
Now I want to go back and add something to that bootimage.
I don't remember anything about the processes that I used.
When I mount the bootable CD I see the following:
boot.catalog* bootimage cdrom/
The cdrom directory has lots of stuff that I want to
access, but I don't see any way to get to it. I can
mount bootimage as fat and I see:
attrib.exe* command.com* drvspace.bin* fdisk.exe* format.com* io.sys* msdos.sys* sys.com* xcopy32.exe*
autoexec.bat* config.sys* edit.exe* fileman.exe* himem.sys* mscdex.exe* sbide.sys* xcopy.exe* xcopy32.mod*
I want to add a few more .exe files to the bootimage.
What I am afraid of is that anyone old enough to understand
this post will also have suffered the same memory loss
as I have. Will anyone help?
TIA.
philo
Freeballer
Is it possible these images are password protected? The stars are kind
of strange and in winimage/winrar it typically means protected.
--
"'Bill Gates can't guarantee Windows, so how in the HELL can you
guarantee our safety!' --John Crichton (Farscape)"
Joe
Depends on the ls options.
A star usually means the executable bit is set.
The whole thing with the boot image being a floppy image is part of the El
Torito bootable CD format. See the El Torito article on Wikipedia.
Essentially, the El Torito CD boot spec allows to emulate a floppy. For that,
the boot image has to be exactly the size of a floppy (1.44MB, or 2.88 max.)
cdrecord can create the bootable cds with a floppy boot image.
-Joe
Jasen Betts
> Now I want to go back and add something to that bootimage.
> I don't remember anything about the processes that I used.
> When I mount the bootable CD I see the following:
> boot.catalog* bootimage cdrom/
mtools
cdfs may be useful too unless there's another way to extract an
eltorito image.
"eltorito" is probably the word you want to search for.
root
>
> The whole thing with the boot image being a floppy image is part of the El
> Torito bootable CD format. See the El Torito article on Wikipedia.
> Essentially, the El Torito CD boot spec allows to emulate a floppy. For that,
> the boot image has to be exactly the size of a floppy (1.44MB, or 2.88 max.)
> cdrecord can create the bootable cds with a floppy boot image.
>
> -Joe
>
El Torito, that's it. Thanks.
root
Thanks, I had forgotten the key words el torito.
root
I remember now one of the "hoops" mkisofs makes
you jump through: "Uh Oh, I cant find ...".
The secret is that the boot image has to be
in the directory that you are going to burn
to cd. For example, if I am in a directory
that has cdrom as a sub-directory which I
want to burn to CD I use:
mkisofs -b boot.img -c boot.catalog -o/sda4/image.iso cdrom
but boot.img and boot.catalog are both in
the cdrom subdirectory.
Follow up question: the man mkisofs suggests that
it is possible to create a CD with several
alternate boot images. Before I try doing this,
how would the various images be selected at
boot time? Is there a little lilo thing there?
Jasen Betts
I presume the BIOS chooses one that's compatible with
architecture of the host hardware.
bb
Since there is a * after every name you look at files with perm 777 from linux
and can't run them at all unless you start dosemu.
The Microsoft license do not allow you to copy a single file from it, so you
should use the util dosbootdisk to create a freedos image instead.
/bb
unruh
> On 2009-12-11 17:50, root wrote:
>> Nearly 20 years ago when I dumped DOS I made some
>> bootable CDs that could boot into DOS 6.0, Newdos,
>> and such. I remember that when I made the bootable
>> CD from a bootable floppy I had to jump through some
>> hoops which included copying (equivalent to dd) the
>> floppy to a file bootimage on the CD. That bootimage
>> had a number of EXE files that I thought would suffice
>> for any future use.
>>
>> Now I want to go back and add something to that bootimage.
>> I don't remember anything about the processes that I used.
>> When I mount the bootable CD I see the following:
>> boot.catalog* bootimage cdrom/
>>
>> The cdrom directory has lots of stuff that I want to
>> access, but I don't see any way to get to it. I can
>> mount bootimage as fat and I see:
>> attrib.exe* command.com* drvspace.bin* fdisk.exe* format.com* io.sys* msdos.sys* sys.com* xcopy32.exe*
>> autoexec.bat* config.sys* edit.exe* fileman.exe* himem.sys* mscdex.exe* sbide.sys* xcopy.exe* xcopy32.mod*
>>
>> I want to add a few more .exe files to the bootimage.
>>
>> What I am afraid of is that anyone old enough to understand
>> this post will also have suffered the same memory loss
>> as I have. Will anyone help?
>> TIA.
I have no idea what you wnat added, but cdrecord does create bootable
CDs.
man cdrecord-- look for the el torito bootable options and what it
requires.