China DOS Union

The following is quoted from 不点's post at 2003-12-4 13:19:18:
The goals of grub for dos are far from being reached. There are still complex and difficult tasks waiting, such as emulating the iso CD file system, booting CDROM, and so on (these issues were once discussed in a forum on this site). Although I very much support your grub for win, it seems I no longer have time to do it, very sorry. Thank you for all your help and support.

 In the future grub for dos may also be able to run from the DOS window of win98. But it may not necessarily be able to run from the win2000 environment. This depends on whether win2000 can be HACKed so that we can easily switch from protected mode to real mode. But these for windows implementations are not in the plan, and perhaps there simply will be no time to do them.

Hi,

Thank you for your reply.

Nevertheless, I hope you would continue improving your Grub for DOS and we wish to build upon your basis for our Grub for Win.

Grub for Win? Does this mean Grub for Win32 DOS Console?

The following is quoted from Wengier's post at 2003-12-5 3:16:04:
Grub for Win? Does this mean Grub for Win32 DOS Console?

Grub is a bootmanager. We wish to open a project so that we can have a Win32 GUI for installing and configuring Grub.

About grub for dos, I want to talk about my own plans. I think development of GRUB for DOS can, for now, come to an end. Further development, HACKing, etc. are rather trivial and troublesome. I don't want to put more energy into it; I want to do something else. I once said before that I would add functions such as ISO booting, but now it seems I have no time to do it.

The current test version should be relatively complete. In a few days (that is, in late December) I will publicly release a test version. About one month later I will officially release 0.2.0, and this 0.2.0 should not differ much from the current test version. During this period there will only be BUG fixes, and no new code will be added.

If anyone does further development based on GRUB for DOS, I give it one hundred thousand percent support.

No, friends. It looks like public testing will have to be postponed.

Today I used grub_t10 on another machine, and even without using any disk emulation function, it actually could not boot win98. But strangely, it can boot LINUX. grub_for_dos-0.1.4 has no problem.

The symptom when booting WIN98 is: crash. Pressing ctrl+Alt+del can restart the machine.

Has no one run into this situation? Or did everyone run into it, but just doesn't want to report BUGs? Or is it that simply no one has tested this version?

Post the address of the latest GRUB test version; that way everyone can test it.

Also, now there is already complete source code for the XCOPY command in DOSes such as FreeDOS and ROM-DOS. I wonder if it could be modified to add an option for continuously copying files?

Post the address of the latest GRUB test version; that way everyone can test it.

The address is at

ftp://ftp.cosoft.org.cn/incoming/grub_t10.exe

Sigh! Not very interesting. Actually there is no need for everyone to test it; my own testing is already hard enough to deal with. It is not that this version is dangerous, but rather that I myself feel very confused: where exactly the problem is, I don't know either. It should be a BUG in the programming, but I cannot imagine exactly where the problem is. After a while, I will make the source program public and let everyone look for the problem together. (Rather annoying). Right now I have not yet organized the source program and documentation.

Also, now there is already complete source code for the XCOPY command in DOSes such as FreeDOS and ROM-DOS. I wonder if it could be modified to add an option for continuously copying files?

This idea is not bad. If I have time, I am going to try it.

grub_t11 has been released as a public test version. The download address is here:

ftp://ftp.cosoft.org.cn/incoming/grub_t11.exe

The documentation is still here:

http://www.linuxeden.com/edu/doctext.php?docid=3006

Also, if I have time, I plan to write another detailed explanatory article for 0.2.0.

This version eliminates all serious BUGs discovered so far that lead to security risks. It is time to provide it for public testing.

Strongly support.

Moderator 不点: In grub's menu, is there any way to change the startup screen to something like the one in Linux9.0? I installed it in the MBR...

What I am most concerned about is the stability of the new version. At present I have no time to consider adding other patches.

redhat's grub is patched and can display a background image.

For now I do not want to increase the maintenance complexity of grub for dos, and do not want to add redhat's patch.

If you are interested, you can add it yourself. When grub for dos 0.2.0 is released, you will be able to compile it yourself.

Brother 不点, under dos once I enter Grub, I can only reboot; I did not find an exit command. Is there any command like Exit or Quit to return to DOS?

The documentation for grub for dos already says that grub.exe cannot return to DOS.

If functions are to be added, there are many things waiting to be done:

1. Support booting from ISO image files (complex situation, difficult)
2. Support booting from CDROM (complex situation, difficult)
3. Support running grub directly under win98 (high technical difficulty)
4. Automatically detect and restore BIOS interrupt vectors, thereby making grub for dos support arbitrary real-mode DOS. (medium technical difficulty)
5. Be able to run grub for dos even when emm386 is running (first solve switching from protected mode to real mode) (high technical difficulty)
6. Solve some conflicts with win98 during disk emulation. (high technical difficulty)
7. Add the function of exiting to DOS. (medium technical difficulty)

Unfortunately, I have no time to do them. But I will persist in doing 0.2.0 well, and in the future when GNU GRUB is upgraded, I will also upgrade grub for dos correspondingly. But I am afraid I cannot continue adding functions to grub for dos.

I am satisfied with the recent grub for dos. It is a phased product, and a period can be put after it.

grub for dos 0.2.0 is very likely to become the final edition (at most it will only change to track GNU), and I hope interested people continue to develop it.

The second public test version is released:

　　 Added the function of emulating any MS-DOS logical partition as a hard disk (good!); by improving the algorithm, removed the BUG that "after MS-DOS 7+ is started by GRUB.EXE, GRUB.EXE cannot be run again" (good!). The release date of the official version basically depends entirely on the completion date of the English documentation. I hope someone can help . Writing English is rather hard for me, so if I write the English explanation for 0.2.0, it may be overly simplified.

　　BUGs can still be reported in the "Boot Disk Room" of Wengier's New DOS Forum.


　　Download the second (perhaps the last) public test version here:

ftp://ftp.cosoft.org.cn/incoming/grub_t12.exe

　　Note 1: The above BUG has already existed for a long time in previous versions, so this test version should be the most usable one.

　　Note 2: After improving the MS-DOS 7+ detection algorithm, it may perhaps bring new problems, causing grub.exe simply to be unable to run under MS-DOS 7+ on some machines. If so, please report the BUG as soon as possible .



The Chinese documentation is temporarily placed at the end of the following webpage:
http://www.linuxeden.com/edu/doctext.php?docid=3006

不点: I just tried it and found that GRUB's T12 version cannot start after the VIDE-CDD.SYS CD-ROM driver is loaded, while GRUB's T11 version can. Also, could you introduce in more detail the cause of the GRUB BUG you just fixed, etc.? Thanks!