A replacement master boot record ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Contents ~~~~~~~~ 1. Copyright 2. Introduction 3. Basic Installation 4. The boot process 5. Configuration 6. Acknowledgements 1. Copyright ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Copyright (C) 1995, 1999 Neil Turton This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. See file COPYING for details 2. Introduction ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ When a PC is reset, it goes through a series of self tests, and then attempts to load an operating system. The loading process requires a number of steps. When booting from a hard disk, these are to read and execute the first sector of the first hard disk, called the master boot record, which in turn, reads and executes the first sector of one of the partitions on that disk, called a boot sector. The program code on this sector then loads the operating system. The standard MBR (master boot record) which comes with MSDOS is fairly simple, and limited in a number of ways. The MSDOS MBR is also non-free which means that it cannot form part of a completely free system. This MBR is more complicated, and aims to overcome these limitations. 3. Basic Installation ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ See the file 'INSTALL' for generic building instructions. By default this package installs the program install-mbr in /usr/local/sbin. This program is used to install the MBR and contains a copy of the MBR within itself. Before you begin, make sure you have an alternative way of booting your computer (ie. boot floppy). When all fails and your computer sits there asking you to insert a system disk, you'll be stuck if you don't have one. Installation is done using the program called install-mbr. If this program is not on your path, you will have to invoke it as