[mu TECH] How identify the startup hard-disk

From: Michele Andreoli (m.andreoli@tin.it)
Date: Tue Jan 25 2000 - 12:18:14 CET


A strange question that i wish to discuss with you, my friend.

As you see, when dos user install muLinux, muLinux ask the user
for "what is the hard-disk partition you keep my images?"

I think, this is a kind of surprising question for the user, because
it surely believe this should be well known to installer program.

My question is: how to inform loadlin about startup partition?

We can put other dos command in "install.bat" and, I think, using
DOS pipe and redirection, this is not possible.

For example: install.bat segment:

                [ snip ]
                dir >> loadlin.cfg
                ....
                loadling @loadling.cfg

                [ snip]

The DOS dir command put a the bottom of loadlin.cfg something like
the unused size of the startup hardisk.
When muLinux boot, it can check the UNUSED size of ALL hard-disks
and guest the good one. Using also the "cd" of "pwd" command in
the DOS and appending result in loadlin.cfg, you can tell the
kernel about the directory where user stored the images.

I need a dos command which use pipe and produce something like
a boot prompt parameter unused=....

                dir | the_program >> loadlin.cfg

We know there is also a grep.exe for DOS, but a original C program
is better. Other command, different from "dir", can be tested,
of course. chkdsk?

Finally, I think this mechanism is original in Linux distributions
and should be very interesting to implement it for muLinux, as
a sort of ultra-rustic probing.

Michele

-- 
I'd like to conclude with a positive statement, but I can't 
remember any. Would two negative ones do?       -- Woody Allen
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