SDI Ramdisk Image with DOS

[Harald Jennerich]

Hi,

Is it possible to boot MSDOS Operating system which is stored on an SDI
Image?
I have a working network solution based on BFD107 Network Bootdisk including
USB 2.0 Disk and CD Support for Cloning XPE Images with Symantec Ghost or
Powerquest PQDI.
I want to keep all the server related stuff (Ghost...) in one image to be
able to deploy
updates of my XPE - Images on either USB Harddisk, Net. or CD..

I think if i could build a SDI image and boot it with ntldr I could use
exactly
one image ( >2.8MB incl. PQDI ) for this purpose.

I tried to create a SDI image with a "bootsect.dos" in the C:\ Drive .

boot.ini: Disk
ramdisk(0)\bootsect.dos="hda1:MSDOS for PQDI" /sos
/rdpath=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\bfd107.sdi /rdimageoffset=4096
/noguiboot


boot.ini: Network
ramdisk(0)\bootsect.dos="net0:MSDOS for PQDI" /sos
/rdpath=net(0)\bfd107.sdi /rdimageoffset=4096 /noguiboot

I guess that my "bootsect.dos" cannot be used to start from NT-Ramdisk and
I have to
write a special SDI loader.

If I try the Ramdisk boot from network with the above entry in "boot.ini"
the
ntldr was never seen to read the file "bootsect.dos" when i logged the
network
traffic with Ethereal. Instead ntldr trys to find a ntoskrl in the RAMDISK.
Is that correct?

Any idea to get a working solution?

kind regards

Harald

 

[Slobodan Brcin]

I'm using small XPE build in SDI file, and from this build I make initial
setup and autodeploy of working XPE image.

For dos boot, I don't know way (syntax) to tell it to boot from SDI image.
You guess is good, BTW you should check rdimageoffset value to see if it is
really 4096.
Try without sos, noguiboot switches since they are not used for dos.

But you can boot dos from USB, and CD easily.

Best regards,
Slobodan

 

[Saad Syed [MS]]

Harald,

What you're trying to do is not possible. The ramdisk is not accessible from
DOS. The bootsect.dos functionality allows one to specify a bootstrap image
which NTLDR will reboot into, it has to be relative to C:\; where C:\ is the
assumed location of NTLDR. This is the same as using the bootstrap image as
your network boot program.

Typically bootsect.dos is a boot sector which continues booting DOS (or some
or OS). Incase of DOS the boot sector looks for IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS on the
hard disk (not ramdisk). The ramdisk is not an int13 device, its loaded into
high memory and is inaccessible from real mode.

HTH,
Thanks,
- Saad, MS

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[KM]

I've done this once but it has been a long time ago so I might not recall
all the details.
Try looking into RIS/3COM DOS solution (just a DOS image). You can download
it from ftp://ftp.3com.com/pub/lanworks/risme101_install.exe (or
http://www.rdg.mirror.ac.uk/sites/ftp.3com.com/pub/lanworks/[textonly])
(some info here http://www.3com.com/en_US/lanworks/).
When you create a DOS image with 3COM tool, try to use it on behalf of a sdi
file from Remote Boot Manager and see if it works.
To be honest, I remember loading the DOS image using RIS to my XPE device
(PXE bios) and I do remember playing with the Remote Boot Manager and
loading this DOS image with it of but I don't remember exact result and
additional hacks I did to make it work.

BSquare Corp.,
KM