Syslinux - Mar 2005 - retrieve drive letter of USB Media.

Does SYSLINUX have any idea which DOS driveletter would be assigned to the disk
it is booting from?
At www.veder.com someone is trying to build a USB flash drive.
However, FreeDOS does not seem to boot correctly from it
(bootsector trouble maybe, or kernel itself is confusing drives),
thus we're thinking of using Syslinux + Memdisk + bootimage,
but somehow we want to be able to also access the USB flash disk itself,
from a batchfile.

Perhaps MEMDISK could not only have the Bootloader_ID (syslinux, and others),
but also a disk ID (0x00, 0x80 and so on).

Then if diskID was retrieved and is 0x00,
we know we booted from a bootdrive which would be A: and currently accessible as
B: (because of Memdisk taking A: driveletter).


This would at least work for diskette, but I don't have an idea if it would
work for USB.

Easiest would ofcourse be to fix the FreeDOS bootsector and/or kernel, so that
it appears to boot from a 256MB A: drive for example.

MSDOS (from Win98) does seem to appear OK.

Situation can be compared to booting from cdrom on a system with multiple
cdromdrives, and then having to try each and every cdromdrive for finding out
'which drive contains the disk with all my info outside of the initial
1.44MB emulated floppy drive'

Any ideas?

Bernd


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On Tue, Mar 01, 2005 at 03:51:21PM +0100, Blaauw,Bernd B.
wrote:
> Does SYSLINUX have any idea which DOS driveletter would be assigned to the
disk it is booting from?
> At www.veder.com someone is trying to build a USB flash drive.
> However, FreeDOS does not seem to boot correctly from it
> (bootsector trouble maybe, or kernel itself is confusing drives),
> thus we're thinking of using Syslinux + Memdisk + bootimage,
> but somehow we want to be able to also access the USB flash disk itself,
> from a batchfile.
> 
> Perhaps MEMDISK could not only have the Bootloader_ID (syslinux, and
others),
> but also a disk ID (0x00, 0x80 and so on).
> 
> Then if diskID was retrieved and is 0x00,
> we know we booted from a bootdrive which would be A: and currently
accessible as B: (because of Memdisk taking A: driveletter).
> 
> 
> This would at least work for diskette, but I don't have an idea if it
would work for USB.
> 
> Easiest would ofcourse be to fix the FreeDOS bootsector and/or kernel, so
that it appears to boot from a 256MB A: drive for example.
> 
> MSDOS (from Win98) does seem to appear OK.
> 
> Situation can be compared to booting from cdrom on a system with multiple
cdromdrives, and then having to try each and every cdromdrive for finding out
'which drive contains the disk with all my info outside of the initial
1.44MB emulated floppy drive'
> 
> Any ideas?
I don't wanna make anybody unhappy,
but it seems that you have a serious legacy problem.

The trick is thinking in functionality, not in applications.
Tell your organisation about the Total Cost of Ownership of non-free
software.
> 
> Bernd
Cheers
Geert Stappers

>I don't wanna make anybody unhappy,
>but it seems that you have a serious legacy problem.
>The trick is thinking in functionality, not in applications.
>Tell your organisation about the Total Cost of Ownership of non-free
>software.
This isn't economically motivated.
I'm working on FreeDOS, just an opensource clone for using all those old
applications and games, and for general use for legally spreading bootdisks etc
(bios flashing, familiar with that?).

just a hobby, no economical motives.

I guess you mean under Linux it's a lot easier to retrieve the USB medium as
/dev/sdXn ?

next thing you know people are negative on a project like ReactOS saying
'why waste your talent on that and not working on Linux instead?' .

Yes, I do have a problem..I'm no hardcore programmer and limited to my
knowledge of batchfile 'coding'/scripting. No Pascal, no C, no C++.
I even suck at writing Java.
 
but, what non-free software where you talking about, exactly?

Bernd


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Blaauw,Bernd B. wrote:
> Does SYSLINUX have any idea which DOS driveletter would be assigned to the
disk it is booting from?
Nope; that would pretty much require following the DOS algorithm for 
drive letter assignment.
> At www.veder.com someone is trying to build a USB flash drive.
> However, FreeDOS does not seem to boot correctly from it
> (bootsector trouble maybe, or kernel itself is confusing drives),
> thus we're thinking of using Syslinux + Memdisk + bootimage,
> but somehow we want to be able to also access the USB flash disk itself,
> from a batchfile.
> 
> Perhaps MEMDISK could not only have the Bootloader_ID (syslinux, and
others),
> but also a disk ID (0x00, 0x80 and so on).
> 
> Then if diskID was retrieved and is 0x00,
> we know we booted from a bootdrive which would be A: and currently
accessible as B: (because of Memdisk taking A: driveletter).
How about just leaving an index file on the drive, and looking for that?

	-hpa