Dec 092017
| Boot LINUX directly from hard disk or from inside DOS. New version fixes some of the problems assosiated with an earlier version. | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| File Name | File Size | Zip Size | Zip Type |
| BOOTLIN.ASM | 9887 | 3252 | deflated |
| BOOTLIN.COM | 1304 | 1068 | deflated |
| BOOTLIN.DOC | 5671 | 2603 | deflated |
| MAKEFILE | 216 | 118 | deflated |
| WHATSNEW | 1712 | 799 | deflated |
Download File BOOTLIN4.ZIP Here
Contents of the BOOTLIN.DOC file
SUBJECT: BootLinux v1.3 documentation
DATE:06-30-92
AUTHOR: Fabien COUTANT
ENSIMAG, Grenoble, France
Email:[email protected] (until 06-30-92)
COMMAND:bootlin.com
SYNTAX:[
(relatively to your boot drive root)
DESCRIPTION:
The image file, which name is provided on the command line, is
the one you "rawrite" to a disk to make it boot Linux: it must contain
the decompressed form of the bootimage-xxxx.Z; you can also copy (with
mtools I suppose) the file "Image", that is produced by making the kernel,
to a DOS partition and then use it directly as argument in the bootlin
command line.
BootLinux loads from the specified file the three components
(boot sector, setup and kernel) at their usual loading addresses, then
correctly sets some registers and jumps to the setup, which in his turn
should run Linux.
Since the kernel is loaded from the first 64K barrier (10000H or
1000H:0) and bootlin uses DOS to read the file, and because DOS will
load bootlin at the lowest address above itself, bootlin MUST be loaded
below the first 64K of the memory. The best way to achieve that is to
declare your CONFIG.SYS as the unique line:
SHELL=c:\etc\bootlin.com c:\etc\bootimag.96b
assuming that the bootlin.com and bootimag.96b files are in c:\etc.
Of course, you still want to be able to run DOS at the same time, so
the idea is to use a CONFIG.SYS "multiplexer", e.g. something that
shows you on boot a menu, in which you choose wether you want to boot
DOS or Linux. I personnally use BOOT.SYS, which consumes nearly no
memory and is very powerful; using this, a config.sys should look like:
DEVICE=C:\UTIL\BOOT.SYS
DEVICE=BOOT.1 DOS
...
here you put the usual config.sys
...
DEVICE=BOOT.2 Linux
SHELL=c:\etc\bootlin c:\etc\image
DEVICE=BOOT.END
If you are using DOS 5, it may tell you that it is trying to
load BootLin high and that it fails... don't worry: apart from the
message, it doesn't matter. BTW, I used to put a "DOS=LOW" line to
remove the warning message, but then DOS was ALWAYS loading low, even
if I had a "DOS=HIGH" in the first part of the config.sys ... It appears
that to know if it has to load high or low, DOS reads entirely the
config.sys and looks for the last "DOS=".
If the specified file is not found, you will be prompted to enter
a new file name, until the corresponding file is found. If an error occur during
loading, a small error message is displayed and the computer is hung. The
behaviour is not defined if you don't follow exactly the syntax... in the
best case it will prompt you for a new file name.
BootLinux checks if it is loaded enough low in memory; if it is not
the case, an error message is displayed, the computer is hung, and you
should reboot. It also checks the file is a copy of a BIOS bootable disk.
Once all the loading is done, BootLinux now checks for a non-zero
root device number, so if there's nothing to use as root indicated in the
boot sector, it prompts you for a root device. The available devices are:
[1] at0is5'1/4 1.2M disk in A:
[2] ps0is3'1/2 1.44M disk in A:
[3] at1is5'1/4 1.2M disk in B:
[4] ps1is3'1/2 1.44M disk in B:
[A] hda1isHard Drive 0 BIOS Partition 1
[B] hda2isHard Drive 0 BIOS Partition 2
[C] hda3isHard Drive 0 BIOS Partition 3
[D] hda4isHard Drive 0 BIOS Partition 4
[E] hdb1isHard Drive 1 BIOS Partition 1
[F] hdb2isHard Drive 1 BIOS Partition 2
[G] hdb3isHard Drive 1 BIOS Partition 3
[H] hdb4isHard Drive 1 BIOS Partition 4
NOTE! the behaviour of BootLinux is NOT defined if the kernel is
more than 512K in size... or if you have less than 640K base memory (I have
not any machine of this kind to test).
DETAILS: (There a lot more checking that is done, but not described here.
The following description is no more exactly valid because
bootlin is not finished at the moment. See the source)
This section describes the details of the loading procedure:
1) installs a new little 2K stack above the program, and checks
this doesn't overlap with the loading zone of the kernel (10000H).
2) tries to open the specified file
3) reads 512 bytes at 9000h:0 (the boot sector)
4) reads 4*512 bytes at 9000h:200h (the setup)
5) loads the remaining bytes of the file at 1000h:0
and closes the file
6) sets SS=DS=ES=9000h, SP=4000h and AX=
bootsector. SP was before set to the v0.12 value... OK, I
admit it is more secure to set it to the new v0.95c+ & Co value,
BUT I checked that it had nothing to do with the problems you
had with the first version.
I would have liked to also set FS and GS, but this caused
problems at linking with TLINK, so I gave it up.
I set SP to 4000h, not 3FF4h, because there's no need for a new
disk parameter table, since linux does not use Bios to read the
root device.
7) jumps at 9020h:0. That's here I made an enormous mistake last time:
jumping at 9000h:200h caused possible hangs of the computer and
display of garbage instead of the "Press
I'm now surprised it worked well, apart from the garbage problem.
INFORMATIONS:
For those who want to use BOOT.SYS, it is shareware and can be
found at least on Simtel mirrors. I know more particularly the
following locations:
wuarchive.wustl.edu:/systems/msdos/[sS]imtel20/sysutl/boot142.zip
oak.oakland.edu:/pub/msdos/sysutl/boot142.zip
December 9, 2017
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