OK that's great. Thanks.
Now, I am trying to create a method of booting from USB (and later from CD - for reasons which will become apparent if I get a chance to test the options from the USB which is the quickest method of testing) from a DOS boot.
The reason for this is simply that the LiveCD appears to use an El Torito boot method, which means that it has a DOS partition unused anyway and many users (and many more potential users) could not perform the actions above because they don't (yet) have an available bootable Linux partition.
All around the web, there is strong advice to use loadlin (Load Linux) which allows a DOS boot to then boot into Linux from a Kernel Image File and which then OVERLAYS THE ENTIRE DOS OS. In other words, the DOS is no longer there. It is recommended strongly by many as a means of Windows/DOS users to migrate to Linux and try it out without the problems associated with such things as installing Linux on a partition which it won't then boot from and they have to get into Grub, Lilo and possibly move the partition or reinstall.
Also, remember that most of us have a limited number of USBsticks many people only one. Which means it is used for many things. Finding a SIMPLE way to re-create the boot into GParted without actually having any other Linux would mean that the GParted can simply be copied to the stick which would retain its DOS bootability between uses (and just about anyone can learn how to create a DOS bootable USB stick - leaving the tricky stuff to be included in the files which simple need copying).
A partition which boots into DOS but then immediately runs loadlin (from the autoexec.bat file) and boots linux has many advantages.
I have managed to successfully boot from a DOS partition on a USB stick using loadlin (directly using the autoexec.bat) to boot the GParted based on the gparted-livecd-0.3.4-2 version of LiveCD. The trouble is that because some of the parameters appeart to be "fixed" within the CD boot process, my boot does not pause 300 seconds allowing me to switch to vesa so I am now blocked from continuing testing.
Any ideas about how I can change the configuration to ensure that the pause/prompt occurs? What is my method leaving out? I am simply telling loadline the basic parameters in the isolinux.cfg/syslinux.cfg files (not sure why we need both of those either as Larry has stated elsewhere that one needs copying to the other).
The command I am using is:
In AUTOEXEC.BAT which will give this DOS command immediately on booting:
loadlin.exe @loadlin.par
The @loadlin.par is simply telling loadlin that it will find it's parameters in a file in the same directory (root) called loadlin.par
The loadlin.par file is a textfile (DOS with CR-LF line breaks) containing only the following:
gparted
initrd=gparted.igz
root=/dev/ram0
init=/linuxrc
vga=788
looptype=squashfs
loop=/gparted.dat
dokeymap
cdroot=/dev/sda1
splash=silent
nosound
docache
(note that this is a direct copy of the configuration file initial commands from the gparted live-cd).
Now I can create a menu in the DOS batchfile which would get the choices (vesa int810 etc) but I would need to make two small changes which would pass these on - and the existing boot process would need changing to use them! (I tried video=vesa as a parameter which works until the linux boot takes over and then it is overridden which blanks my screen).
The other method would be to tell me how to change the loadlin parameters to ensure that the existing 300 second prompt activates correctly.
Anyone any ideas?
