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From: tvf@cci632.UUCP (Tom Frauenhofer)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix,comp.unix.sysv386,comp.unix.msdos,comp.unix.questions,unix-pc.general
Subject: Re: multiple bootable partitions
Keywords: Is it possible?
Message-ID: <40776@cci632.UUCP>
Date: 16 Oct 90 20:25:58 GMT
References: <1990Oct14.095603.5272@ecst.csuchico.edu> <1990Oct16.145551.15653@ddsw1.MCS.COM>
Reply-To: tvf@cci632.UUCP (Tom Frauenhofer)
Organization: Computer Consoles, Inc., An STC Icon, Rochester, NY
Lines: 33

I'm cross-posting this discussion to comp.os.minix, as they might have just
the thing there:

In article <1990Oct16.145551.15653@ddsw1.MCS.COM> nvk@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Norman Kohn) writes:
>In article <1990Oct14.095603.5272@ecst.csuchico.edu> rreid@csuchico.edu (Ralph Reid) writes:
>>the 360MB hard disk.  I would like to then be able to boot up on
>>either MS-DOS or UNIX.  How do I do it?  Is there any software
>
>Microport had this feature: you could type "dos" when the
>/unix prompt came up at boot time, and it would boot from a 
>dos partition.
>
>A good project for the public domain would be a "dummy"
>fdisk partition, consisting only of boot program, which when
>"booted" would ask which partition to boot, and then jump to it;
>after a timeout it could jump to a default partition.
>This would solve a lot of the "active partition" problems
>and should be a feasible and portable project.

Earl Chew has written a bootstrap package called "Shoelace" that does just this.
I build it under Minix and set it up so that it loads from my hard disk.  You
tell it the default partition you want, it shows you a list of the disk partitions,
and you can select one.  After 15 seconds it times out and goes to the default.
It's pretty neat.  It's available from the Minix archives on various machines,
I forget which one I got it from.  It's a pretty well thought out piece of
software.

I don't know if it can be built under anything other than Minix, but I wouldn't be
surprised.
-- 
Thomas V. Frauenhofer, WA2YYW	ccicpg!cci632!tvf@uunet.uu.net	tvf1477@ma.cs.rit.edu
"Little cockroach on the wall/Don't you have no friends at all?
 Doesn't anybody love you?/God will love you! (SQUISH!)"