Re: Install process

["James R. Van Zandt" <jrv@vanzandt.mv.com>]

Gregory S. Stark wrote:

> It might even be possible to pass a parameter from loadlin with the
> dos path the kernel was loaded from; the user could mount the msdos
> filesystem and the install program could read the base disks (or a
> single image) straight from the original dos partition.

I was thinking about this last night.  It could help the new user over
two of the awkward questions that dinstall asks: what partition to get
the base disks from, and what directory in that partition.

If the loadlin command line includes a parameter which gives the path,
then dinstall can read it from /proc/cmdline.

To get the path into the loadlin command line, this is the best I have
come up with so far:

partial.bat contains the string "set where=" with no carriage return or
line feed.

install.bat contains these five lines:

  @copy partial.bat c:\$debian$.bat
  @cd >>c:\$debian$.bat
  @call c:\$debian$.bat
  @erase c:\$debian$.bat
  @loadlin linux root=/dev/ram initrd=root.bin DebianDir=%where%

I'm copying partial.bat for two reasons.  First, the current directory
may not be writable (e.g. on a cdrom).  Second, we want to be able to
start the installation more than once.  Just appending to the original
file would not let us do this.

This fails if we cannot create a new file in c:\ .  The result is some
harmless warning message, and a null value for DebianDir.

Any suggestions on making this more bulletproof?

I have not checked this on a Win95 system, to see whether cd generates
a long directory name, or an 8+3 mangled version.

                                - Jim Van Zandt


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