Hi!
> 1) When, at the end of the install, the installer asks what to do with
> the bootsector AKA "Volume Boot Record". Is it the same thing as when a
> linux installer allows me to install grub to the 1st superblock of the
> "/" partition??? {it seams to have the same effect}
Yes that is similar. In both cases, you need to boot
the partition (for example using a boot menu in the
MBR for the whole disk) and then the boot sector in
the DOS partition or the superblock in the Linux one
contain code to continue booting. However, GRUB often
is used as boot menu, not just to load Linux, so GRUB
is often configured as the to-be-booted-thing in your
MBR. In the case of GRUB2 (?) it will then search the
PC for bootable operating systems by looking at all
boot records and present those as boot menu. Classic
GRUB relied more on a configuration file for that, in
GRUB2 it is more automatic...
> 2) Is there a way to make that happen for a restored backup of a fully
> configured copy of freedos... I mean Like if I made a boot floppy and
> used it to do something like " A:> sys c: ", would that have the same
> effect??
There are two cases: You made a backup of all files,
so you failed to backup the boot sector, or you made
a diskimage, but restored it to another location, so
the boot sector needs fresh adjustments...
In both cases, you need something to fix your DOS boot
sector. You can boot DOS from CD, DVD, USB or diskette
and simply run "SYS C:" indeed. You can also use Linux
and run the "sys freedos linux" tool (sys-freedos.pl)
to make a bootsector for a partition or diskimage. In
the latter case, you may have to manually specify the
absolute location of the partition, as mkdosfs (Linux
tool to format FAT partitions) may fail to do so. If
your partition already was formatted by DOS / Windows
anyway, the offset should already be set... See also:
http://wiki.fdos.info/Installation/BootDiskCreateUSB
Note that you can use any FreeDOS boot floppy image
to make a bootable floppy or CD or DVD, the latter by
specifying the floppy image as the boot image in most
decent CD / DVD writing tools (e.g. k3b works fine).
I think FreeDOS provides a regular build for minimal
boot disks, but you can also use Rugxulo's RUFFIDEA
distro which contains most of FreeDOS 1.0 "base" and
some updates and small extra tools on very few disks.
> 3) you wouldn't happen to know if using clonezilla's expert mode to de-select
> cloning the "hidden data between MBR and 1st partition" when making a
> clone of a working bootable {via chainloader} freedos partition, would
> result in a clone that wouldn't trash the existing MBR when it was...
I do not understand the question. In the MBR, you may
have a boot menu such as GRUB. Which may extend into
the space between MBR and 1st partition. To boot DOS,
you need anything (MBR directly, or a boot menu) to
get you to the boot sector of the DOS partition which
must be a PRIMARY partition (sda/hda/... numbers 1-4)
and the boot sector of the DOS partition must contain
the correct info about WHERE the partition is, as in
distance from start-of-disk / MBR to the DOS partition
itself (DOS sometimes calls this nr of hidden sectors).
Actually you could even boot DOS from a non-primary
partition if you fixed the location information, as
normally non-primary partitions use "relative" place
values while booting needs "absolute" ones. Not sure
which side effects you would get, though.
Eric
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