Eric,
In general, I agree with you.
1) Doing the (possibly) surprising thing would be wrong: if an MBR exists,
overwriting it without mentioning it to the user would be wrong. However,
changing the partitioning (as I did) and not having a booting system was
also very surprising (and wrong IMO).
2) IMO, the installer should detect and ask if the MBR could/should be
overwritten.
3) The current behavior does not mimic DOS 6 installs [0] (nor installs of
Win9x/ME/NT). I believe they would just override the MBR. Hence the
common late 90s/early 00's advice of install Windows first, then Linux for
dual booters.
4) As it is surprising (when compared to DOS 6 install; and therefore wrong
IMO), it does not meet Jim's "take the simple approach to FD Install" [1].
For a more advanced user like me, I was able to resolve it and they should
too. However, someone who never used DOS or doesn't remember DOS (which I
hope would be the majority of downloaders once this is released), taking an
old netbook, laptop, or desktop, this would be the kind of thing that would
stop them.
[0] https://youtu.be/wlvqEzt5OfM
[1]
http://freedos-project.blogspot.com/2015/05/a-few-thoughts-on-simplifying-install.html
On Thu, Jan 28, 2016 at 6:16 AM, Eric Auer <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> This is tricky - replacing the MBR when things already work
> would be dangerous! It can destroy boot menus and similar.
>
> I would say if there is NO MBR at all yet, it would be okay
> to automatically replace it. If there is some MBR, but the
> DOS partition is not yet marked as bootable, it would be a
> good idea to ASK the user whether that should happen.
>
> Hi Louis :-)
>
> If boot menus are used, MBR should NOT change by default: The
> user would have to add DOS to that boot menu MANUALLY. Also,
> the users should of course be able to overwrite a boot menu
> MBR with a default MBR at their own risk by MANUAL choice.
>
> Note that a boot menu can allow you to install DOS even into
> non-primary partitions. However, our SYS might not know which
> special boot sector / BPB values are required to boot there.
>
> Non-primary partitions have relative disk position offsets.
>
> This discussion is related to the question whether DOS should
> change partitioning during install: I think NOT by default.
>
> We do not have sufficiently modern tools to resize existing
> partitions, so changes would often destroy other data. When
> DOS is installed to an EMPTY disk or VM, it is of course okay
> to replace "no partitions" and install DOS partitions :-) If
> other partitions exist, I would ask the user to make some FAT
> partition for DOS (with their own tools) and try again later.
>
> Of course the user can always be offered to destroy existing
> partitions and use FDISK, if they REALLY want to do that.
>
> Cheers, eric
>
> > Well...so I finished my testing late last night with the MSI Wind
> Netbook.
> > I ran into an issue the MBR was never updated by FDI 1.2. :/ Figured it
> > out eventually. You can read more about it here [0]. There's pictures
> and
> > video.
> >
> > Now, I need to produce an ISO now for the eMachines M6805 I have (no
> > support for USB flash drive boot; tried several BIOSes).
> >
> > [0] https://sites.google.com/site/lpsantil/fdi12-msi-wind
>
>
>
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