2 ideas for a safe way to install on real hw please comment?

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steveh
Posts: 271
Joined: Sat Dec 18, 2004 10:02 pm

2 ideas for a safe way to install on real hw please comment?

Post by steveh »

Given that

- installing Reactos at this time on real hardware is a more or less critical decision because it is alpha

- especially writing the boot sector is one of the most dangerous steps where "something can go wrong" and alien partitions on the same hdd could be damaged

i have a first idea how this can be done. Please check this and omment:

- first install in a VM like vmware or qemu.
- then copy the sectors 0 (not entirely but only bytes x toy ???) and ??? (please remember me which one?) from the virtual hdd FAT32 reactos partition to a fresh formated FAT32 primary partition to the real hdd FAT32 partition intended for reactos
- install reactos on rel partition with option "do not create a boot sector" (neither on hdd or on floppy)

Is this a working solution? A safe one?

And i have a second completely different idea, please comment as well...:

- do "first stage install" on VM until it wants to reboot and choose write the boot sector to the (virtual) hdd
- shutdown the VM while virtual BIOS is restarting before reactos boot
- then copy the virtual just 1st-stage-installed partition to real partition
- shutdown -r now (linux)
- reboot real computer with active unfinished installed reactos partition and do second stage install (which begins with asking for the machine, user and organization name)

I think the advantage of my 2nd idea is that the second stage install process is far less dangerous than the first stage, and cannot "break something" anymore?

Does the 2nd idea work? Or is the first stage process doing "machine specific settings" so that begin on virtual and continuation on real machine is incompatible?
oiaohm
Posts: 1322
Joined: Sun Dec 12, 2004 8:40 am

Post by oiaohm »

Even installing windows can stuff the Master Boot sector its a risk you take when you install a OS. Just a rare event.
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk This tool does not need any partition tables to find partitions after finding the partitions it can recreate the tables that should be there in the. Its a skin saver.

Next is reinstall what boot loader should be there. Ie from windows disk Linux disk ie what ever. And everything is back to normal.

Master Boot sector stuff up is not that critical if you have prepared in advance ie backing it up. Even if you have not having the right tools on hand can fix it as long as the sector can be rewriten. Even If you have backed up the sector you still should have TestDisk on hand just in case the backup is bad.

If you have access to a UPS if the machine contatians data power failure at the wrong time can destory any install.
mcuelenaere
Posts: 55
Joined: Sat Apr 08, 2006 2:26 pm
Location: Belgium

Re: 2 ideas for a safe way to install on real hw please comm

Post by mcuelenaere »

steveh wrote:...

And i have a second completely different idea, please comment as well...:

- do "first stage install" on VM until it wants to reboot and choose write the boot sector to the (virtual) hdd
- shutdown the VM while virtual BIOS is restarting before reactos boot
- then copy the virtual just 1st-stage-installed partition to real partition
- shutdown -r now (linux)
- reboot real computer with active unfinished installed reactos partition and do second stage install (which begins with asking for the machine, user and organization name)

I think the advantage of my 2nd idea is that the second stage install process is far less dangerous than the first stage, and cannot "break something" anymore?

Does the 2nd idea work? Or is the first stage process doing "machine specific settings" so that begin on virtual and continuation on real machine is incompatible?
I am using the second idea, but instead of copying the image to the partition, it writes directly to it. I'm using a second hard disk with a FAT32 formatted partition and a NTFS formatted partition. Since Windows XP is on the first HD, ReactOS can't touch it during the first stage of the install because it can't see it in VMWare.
oiaohm
Posts: 1322
Joined: Sun Dec 12, 2004 8:40 am

Post by oiaohm »

The best and safe option is a removable harddrive setup.

Idea one and two are both not the safest.

Been thinking the safest is to use the multibootloader section of freeldr.sys with grub. Or the raw sector loader of NTLDR of windows. Nethier of these need you to go near the master boot record more than once. With NTLDR not at all.

I wonder if freeldr.sys can be loaded by NTLDR if so it would be the safest option for people with XP installed. The grub option is the safest for the linux people out there.
mcuelenaere
Posts: 55
Joined: Sat Apr 08, 2006 2:26 pm
Location: Belgium

Post by mcuelenaere »

I think the NTLDR can boot freeldr.sys with some modifications, although I don't know which one. Grub is indeed the best option for multibooting.
I use NTLDR which let me choose between Windows XP and GRUB, which directly loads ReactOS from the other HD.
steveh
Posts: 271
Joined: Sat Dec 18, 2004 10:02 pm

removable drive...

Post by steveh »

1.
>The best and safe option is a removable harddrive setup.

Surely, but i think reactos does not support USB drives at this time, does it? :wink:

2.
booting reactos with grub.
This is an option. But the 1st stage installer does some things which are skipped if i copy manually "\reactos" to c: and start freeldr.sys via grub:
- i have no opportunity to select the swiss german keyboard layout (and later change in the control panel still doesn't work)
- serial mouse setting
oiaohm
Posts: 1322
Joined: Sun Dec 12, 2004 8:40 am

Post by oiaohm »

I was not thinking USB drives. I have removable IDE's on my development machine.

USB support will be good when it comes. SATA Support would be nice too. Thinking my motherboard supports hot pluging SATA as well. Ok it the best but not the cheepest.

Yes the control panel still has a few bugs.
crowmag
Posts: 7
Joined: Sat Jun 17, 2006 5:22 am

Post by crowmag »

OK, forgive me if this seems ignorant but why must the boot sector be written to at all?

I mean, ROS uses a FAT32 file system right? So, why not just use a kernel loader program similar to loadlin.exe which can load a Linux kernel from a DOS partition (loadros.exe) instead?

In this way, to prep the drive, all you would need to do is have a DOS-7/FAT32 partition at the beginning of the first active drive (C:).

Booting to ROS would entail using a config.sys/autoexec.bat menu to either load the ROS kernel (on that partition or another FAT32 partition) or or dump you to a DOS prompt on C: where you could access any FAT32 file system on that drive or another using basic DOS tools - sort of like a "Safe Mode".

If you put a dummy "C:\WINDOWS" directory on the C: partition, you can install Win2k/XP on different partitions and boot to them from it, as those installers would recognise the partition as an in place Win9x installation and write a boot.ini to the C: drive to allow boot options for Win9x/2k/XP.

The user wouldn't need to learn how to use and configure a boot loader such as GRUB or change any Windows MBR info and the tools needed are: an easily avaiable Win98 boot floppy and EDIT.EXE.

The ROS installer certainly could not interfere or endanger any existing Win9x/2k/XP installations setup in this manner and it could even write the config.sys/autoexec.bat menu for them.

Maybe it is more complicated than this, I'm not a coder, it just seems more sane to me. :/
oiaohm
Posts: 1322
Joined: Sun Dec 12, 2004 8:40 am

Post by oiaohm »

Ok it would be nice if that was still the case.

Freeldr use to work as a exe from dos in one of its parts of history.

NTLDR is the boot loader of Windows NT-2003 ? Vistia what is its boot loader?

If Freeldr.sys would function directly load by NTLDR would not have half these problems. Nothing of the load system is really in the boot sector other than telling it to load Freeldr.sys and start the boot process of reactos.

freeldr.sys is bult to be loaded by grub or its boot sector. I have not tested it with NTLDR to find out if it will work directly or not.

You can load grub by put a copy of grubs boot sector into a file then having NTLDR load that then load Freeldr.sys. Ok yes just a little to complex.

Also have not tried puting Freeldrs boot sector in a file. This might work also.
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