*BSD News Article 8940


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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