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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Path: sserve!manuel.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.hawaii.edu!ames!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!ufo!kaleb From: kaleb@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov (Kaleb Keithley) Subject: Re: Choosing DOS or BSD at boot time? Message-ID: <1992Dec15.170912.814@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov> Keywords: BSD, DOS Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory (NASA) References: <ali.724425416@barney> Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 17:09:12 GMT Lines: 33 In article <ali.724425416@barney> ali@cs.city.ac.uk ( Ali Syed) writes: >I've MSDOS-5 and BSD Installed on my Hard-disc, the first 120MB for BSD and >remaining 80MB for DOS. When I switch the PC on, the BSD boots ok. However, >if I want to switch to DOS, the 'shutdown -todos' fails. I've tried using >the 'OS-BS' program, but that doesn't work either - choosing DOS is ok, but >loops if I choose BSD. > >Any suggestions as to how I can easily choose either DOS or BSD at boot time? > I would like to to take this opportunity, as 386BSD moves toward 0.2, to lobby for a change in the 386BSD bootstrap loading process. Every commercial version of U*IX manages to live within the constraints of the "default" Master Boot Record, e.g. SVRx/386 has a "boot partition" which contains an intermediate boot record with the logic to allow for selecting a kernel file to execute. I run OS/2 HPFS, (MS-DOS? Just say no!), therefore 'shutdown -todos' doesn't work. (Yes, I *could* "fix" shutdown, but...) I can't use the OS/2 boot manager, which wants its own partition to be bootable, and it handles the rest; but because 386BSD doesn't conform to the convention, it can't boot 386BSD. I suspect users of other boot managers are suffering the same problem. I like 386BSD despite this shortcoming; but I'd really like to get rid of the @#$%^& DOS floppy I have to keep around just so that I can switch between OS/2 and 386BSD.... -- Kaleb Keithley kaleb@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov