Out of necessity, a friend of mine and I have created a patch for syslinux to allow it to modify the mbr and partition table in windows. It adds a -m option to syslinux. If given, it will overwrite the MBR of the drive specified with the mbr.bin provided in syslinux, and if the bootable flag is not set on the partition being syslinuxed, it will set it. This was done to distribute with my USB based distribution so that a user can run syslinux from within windows to perform all steps necessary to make the pen drive bootable. The patch only adds the option to the windows syslinux because performing these steps is much easier in linux, and there was no simple tool I knew of to it in windows at all. However, adding this functionality to the linux version of syslinux would also be possible. Enjoy, and Peter, if you like it, please feel free to modify it and merge it with syslinux. The patch can be found here: http://ncsu.edu/project/runt/dist/syslinux-2.11-mbr.patch If you're interested, my USB distribution is RUNT. http://ncsu.edu/project/runt Joel Ebel Patch written by Richard Woodbury III
Peter, have you had a chance to look at this patch? I somewhat expected some sort of reply. Thanks, Joel Ebel Joel Ebel wrote:> Out of necessity, a friend of mine and I have created a patch for > syslinux to allow it to modify the mbr and partition table in windows. > It adds a -m option to syslinux. If given, it will overwrite the MBR of > the drive specified with the mbr.bin provided in syslinux, and if the > bootable flag is not set on the partition being syslinuxed, it will set > it. This was done to distribute with my USB based distribution so that > a user can run syslinux from within windows to perform all steps > necessary to make the pen drive bootable. The patch only adds the > option to the windows syslinux because performing these steps is much > easier in linux, and there was no simple tool I knew of to it in windows > at all. However, adding this functionality to the linux version of > syslinux would also be possible. Enjoy, and Peter, if you like it, > please feel free to modify it and merge it with syslinux. > > The patch can be found here: > http://ncsu.edu/project/runt/dist/syslinux-2.11-mbr.patch > > If you're interested, my USB distribution is RUNT. > http://ncsu.edu/project/runt > > Joel Ebel > Patch written by Richard Woodbury III > > > _______________________________________________ > SYSLINUX mailing list > Submissions to SYSLINUX at zytor.com > Unsubscribe or set options at: > http://www.zytor.com/mailman/listinfo/syslinux > Please do not send private replies to mailing list traffic. >
On Thu, Aug 19, 2004 at 05:50:16PM -0400, Joel Ebel wrote:> Out of necessity, a friend of mine and I have created a patch for > syslinux to allow it to modify the mbr and partition table in windows. > It adds a -m option to syslinux. If given, it will overwrite the MBR of > the drive specified with the mbr.bin provided in syslinux, and if the > bootable flag is not set on the partition being syslinuxed, it will set > it. This was done to distribute with my USB based distribution so that > a user can run syslinux from within windows to perform all steps > necessary to make the pen drive bootable. The patch only adds the > option to the windows syslinux because performing these steps is much > easier in linux, and there was no simple tool I knew of to it in windows > at all. However, adding this functionality to the linux version of > syslinux would also be possible. Enjoy, and Peter, if you like it, > please feel free to modify it and merge it with syslinux. > > The patch can be found here: > http://ncsu.edu/project/runt/dist/syslinux-2.11-mbr.patch > > If you're interested, my USB distribution is RUNT. > http://ncsu.edu/project/runt > > Joel Ebel > Patch written by Richard Woodbury IIIHello I had a quick view on the patch: 1. STORAGE_DEVICE_NUMBER should be made conditional. I have it in both my cygwin -> mingw cross compiler and in my linux -> mingw cross compiler. 2. A small typo printf( "Error: MBR will not fit; now writing\n" ); ^ Otherwise the patch looks fine to me. -- Lars Munch