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Re: Installing to UMSDOS?



On Mon, 19 Feb 1996, Steve Phillips wrote:

> How does one install to a UMSDOS partition instead of an ext2 pertition?  
> Has anyone ever done this?
> 
> --

I've just completed it - but it was messy for unknown reasons - and I'd 
be interested in hearing other approaches/experiences.

Fist, put umsdos.o and umssync, the umsdos utility from sunsite on a
DOS disk.  Boot from the install boot/root disks and escape to a shell. 
Mount the DOS disk and load umsdos.  Mount /dev/hda1 as type umsdos to
/root. Now the fun begins... 

I tried two alternatives:  umssync /root to setup the umsdos files, exit
back to the setup menu to install and configure the base stuff.  Umsdos
wants to start life in /linux.  So, I "mv'ed" all the directories to
/linux.  Unfortunately a number of files - ld.so for one and /sbin/init
for another - got corrupted with the move.  Trying to fix the umsdos files
names seemed to be too big a trial.  (Why would the files names get
corrupted?  Certain directories, /lib and /sbin, got a big hit.)

So on to alternative two. 

mkdir /hd and mount -t umsdos /dev/hda1 /hd.  Now mkdir /hd/linux (where
things should be in the first place) and rm /root and ln -s /hd/linux
/root.  Umssync /hd/linux.  The debian setup assumes the file destination
is in /root.  Unfortunately the setup tests df to see the /root is
MOUNTED.  So, the rest becomes running a few lines from dinstall by hand. 
Look at dinstall for the exact sequence but it's something like: mount -o
ro -t msdos /dev/fd0 /mnt; cd /mnt; ./install.sh to mount the boot disk
and load some stuff.  Then cd /hd/linux; floppy_merge /dev/fd0 | gunzip |
cpio --extract to get the 3 base disks installed.  There are 4 dsetup_* 
commands to configure everything (from /sbin).  dsetup_mod hung on me but 
i didn't need the module stuff setup so I rebooted and skipped that one.

Finally, you need a vmlinuz with umsdos compiled in which I made on 
another debian machine.  I use loadlin to boot from the DOS command line 
(Win'95 is also installed).

I suffered a number of floppy disk hangs for unknown reasons and nothing 
seemed to repeatable except the /lib & /sbin file name corruptions.  But 
the system does work now.

I have one last problem - emacs will not install.  dpkg-deb complains that
it cannot delete a file that's not there and the emacs/lisp directory is
corrupted!  more to do... 


------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Kirschner                                       #include <disclaimer.std>
pek@utrc.utc.com
United Technologies Research Center


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