Op 5-1-2012 19:54, Pete Batard schreef: > Yeah. That's why I tried to stay as close as possible to the HP utility > as it seems to have the best rate of success. I'm also currently > overriding the partition table to create a single one, but at least the > Windows formatting utility allows preservation of existing partitions so > that's something I have some plan to look into.
Ah I thought you handled a raw device, discarding any metadata, geometry and files anyway due to repartitioning and formatting. > The way I see it at the moment would be ISO files only (but it could be > extended to pick files from an optical drive), and duplicate the file > structure to the FAT32 USB partition we create. Then tweak a few things > (add syslinux, locate the original bootloader and create a .cfg for it, > etc) to make it bootable. That's what Universal-USB-Installer does. Ah you're extracting files out of the ISO (or copy from CD contents). I thought you'd copy the ISO file, or create an ISO file (sector copy by imaging program) of a CD-ROM disk (for example the one containing RUFUS.EXE). I'd prefer keeping things as clean (and intact) as possible, which might actually sound difficult. Basicly the ISO file is mounted and contents accessed. Files: \KERNEL.SYS \FDCONFIG.SYS \DOS\COMMAND.COM \DOS\AUTOEXEC.BAT \DOS\SHSUCDHD (shsucdhd /f:freedos.iso) \DOS\SHSUCDX (shsucdx /d:SHSU-CDH,) \DOS\FREEDOS.ISO > That's good info, but looking at the isohybrid utility source, it seems > it simply relies on the bootable ISO using a version of isolinux that > supports hybrid booting. Yeah it takes a CD-image that contains isolinux, pads the front for partitioning purposes, puts a MBR there as well. The resulting modified file should be bootable as either harddisk image or CD-ROM image by MEMDISK, and it can be raw-written to a USB drive. > Obviously, since Rufus is a Windows application, I want the bootable ISO > -> bootable USB feature to support recent Windows installation ISO > media, so I don't think ISOHybrid will help there. Not sure what you mean by Windows installation media. Guess you ment Windows-compatible filesystems. > Having looked more closely at what Universal-USB-Installer does (which > does supports recent Linux distros as well as Windows installation > disks), I think I will use a similar process for the time being. UnetBootin also is a very specific tool for Linux and non-Linux installation ISOs. Never experimented with it though, only got a single USB-drive and my machine inits USB2.0 to 1.1-speeds anyway. > Obviously, I'd like to support FreeDOS ISO too, though it would seem a > bit weird to me to have a tool that can create a FreeDOS bootable USB, > yet uses memdisk or syslinux to boot from the FreeDOS ISO on USB. I'd > rather copy the files directly onto a FAT partition and let FreeDOS boot > FreeDOS... Most USB drives, if only containing DOS on them, will boot as drive C:. I guess our purposes differ here, as my goal is to allow USB as an installation source (anything but drive C: thus..), not necessarily an installation target or platform to run from. Your goal is getting DOS to run on USB at all. Installation or driveletter assignment stuff not relevant :) > If you guys think it could be useful, once I have sorted ISO support, I > could probably produce a dedicated version of Rufus that embeds (or > downloads) a FreeDOS 1.x ISO and then create an USB bootable version out > of it (keeping the same structure and boot process as the ISO). Or I can > add iPXE as an additional boot option, and perform the steps highlighted > below. I've had a 1.44MB floppy image somewhere, containing Syslinux, iPXE ISO file, MEMDISK and FreeDOS floppy image (360KB) as well as the contents of that image file as individual files. No idea where I left it, not important now either. I'm curious how you plan to add iPXE without relying on bootloaders such as Syslinux and Grub. > And now I've learned that gPXE has been superseded by iPXE. > At least adding an iPXE boot option to Rufus is definitely a good idea, > so I created an enhancement request for it. My own USB disk also contains a Win32 port of QEMU 0.13 as used by ReactOS official releases. I've not found a decent-working(!) win32 version of QEMU 1.0 unfortunately, only a buggy one at [ http://virtuallyfun.superglobalmegacorp.com/?p=1627 ]. Why put QEMU on USB? The FreeDOS ISO is present, thus allowing to boot FreeDOS in some kind of Live Environment mode on Windows. Same could be done for the FreeDOS CD : put QEMU and an ISO there and you can run a FreeDOS Live Environment from CD. QEMU isn't entirely compatible with DOS filesystem limitations and ISO9660 strict specifications though. All these are just wild ideas, anything that RUFUS can do is already a big bonus as FreeDOS lacks win32 and win64 versions of SYS anyway. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
