multi booting

[Ether]

I've been having a blast playing around with my "guinea pig" PC installing various OSes and setting up multiboot.

So far it will boot FreeDOS, DOS62, Win95_OSR2, Win98SE, WinXP_Pro_SP3, and Linux.

Why?

1) To learn the technology

2) So I can boot any of my machines to DOS for development of timing-critical apps and/or apps that need exclusive and unimpeded direct access to the bare metal.

3) To run legacy DOS apps that don't like emulators.

For you multi-booters out there, what boot manager do you use?

[connor.worley]

I've always liked LILO.

[Ether]

Originally Posted by connor.worley

I've always liked LILO.

Why?

[dcarr]

Are you using GRUB right now? Does it do what you need?

[Ether]

Originally Posted by dcarr

Are you using GRUB right now? Does it do what you need?

Yes.

Boots logical partitions

Boots disk images

Leaves the partitions unmodified

MBR installed only once

Does not require its own partition

Edit a simple text file to add new boot partitions to the menu

Can manually enter boot commands at boot time if need be

[yash101]

I use WIndows Boot Manager! Yes, I am not the best with advanced things. I currently have two Windows 7 Installations and an Ubuntu installation. I use WUBI for Ubuntu because it is easy to install and uninstall ubuntu with that boot loader!

[aryker]

I am a big fan of GRUB and GRUB 2. Personally I find that the original GRUB is a bit easier to work with, but that's probably because I grew up with it.

[Ether]

Originally Posted by aryker

I find that the original GRUB is a bit easier to work with...

Could you give some examples?

[aryker]

Originally Posted by Ether

Could you give some examples?

Sure--the main thing that comes to my mind is adding new operating system entries to the GRUB boot menu. In the original GRUB, all you needed to do was add an appropriate entry to the /boot/grub/menu.lst file. Maybe something like this:

title Fedora
root (hd0,1)
chainloader +1

Whereas in GRUB 2, you cannot edit the corresponding menu file(which I believe is /boot/grub/grub.cfg) by hand like that. Instead, there are two different places you have to look into: /etc/grub.d/ and /etc/default/grub.

/etc/grub.d contains a set of scripts that represent separate entries in the menu(among other things) which you should edit/add to if you want to add more entries.

/etc/default/grub is a customization script for the GRUB 2 menu, which you can use to change preferences, except when it comes to the actual menu entries themselves.

This is the main reason why I prefer the original GRUB--which one looks more convoluted to you?

[Ether]

Originally Posted by aryker

This is the main reason why I prefer the original GRUB

Me too.

[yash101]

I prefer GRUB2 Too! However, my family likes Windows Boot Mgr, because they aren't so tech savvy . I loved Grub 2 when I had it . It, indeed, is quite customizable, and does everything it claims quite well ! As many people have said before, it is very easy to operate on and get things running smoothly. Corrupting your BSD in Win. Boot Mgr. is hard to fix because you need to reinstall Windows . However, GRUB 2 just requires you to edit a text file or so to configure it, meaning you can bring your computer back to life. I also like how it has so many features and how it actually has color, as compared to the Windows Boot Manager.

In short, there are many boot-loaders out there, today, being developed. I use the Windows Boot Manager because I am basically locked into using it. However, I would suggest Grub 2 because, if I understand correctly, you want to multiboot many operating systems.
If you manage to break the bootloader configuration, it is many times easier to fix it in Grub, as compared to Windows. However, I am talking about Win 7. Win 8 Boot manager is completely different!

You need to add many operating systems. That means that you would want to be able to add and remove operating systems with ease, not worrying abouy damaging your MBR!

In short, Go GRUB2!!!

Also, has anyone tried a different boot manager like Burg (Grub Backwards? )? How was it? Was it easy to use/worth getting?

Guys, this is just my opinion on what I have used before.

[techhelpbb]

http://www.plop.at/en/bootmanagers.html

I use that when I need features that a BIOS lacks like booting from USB.

[Scott L.]

I only have one multi-boot machine. I use vitalization, so I have simultaneous access to all OSs, other than access to physical hardware, it works excellent.

[Ether]

Originally Posted by techhelpbb

http://www.plop.at/en/bootmanagers.html

I use that when I need features that a BIOS lacks like booting from USB.

I just tried the above this morning.

Impressive!

Installation was flawless, and I got an old junker Gateway Solo 9550 laptop with no BIOS support for booting USB to successfully boot the collection of bootable USBs in my PC Repair toolkit.

The whole thing fits in the MBR, plus the unused sectors following the MPB and before the first sector of the first partition.

[Ether]

Back on topic:

Fellow GRUBbers,

Came across something interesting last night.

sda1 (hd0,0) is FAT16 MSDOS bootable partition flagged as active in the MBR.

sda4 (hd0,3) is FAT16 FreeDOS bootable partition

when I execute these GRUB commands:

rootnoverify (hd0,3)
chainloader +1

... The FreeDOS kernel (KERNEL.SYS) is loaded from (hd0,3), but then the MSDOS shell command.com in (hd0,0) is run.

Anybody know why?