future co-existence with Linux?

[Frank Hofmann cip574@wpax01.physik.uni-wuerzburg.de]

jmk@plan9.ATt.COM wrote:
: 	> a) making plan9 bootable from LILO (the Linux loader)?
: I don't know what LILO does, in fact I know very little about Linux.
: The Plan 9 kernel has to be loaded into memory at 0x100020 and jumped to
: in protected mode. It also expects some configuration data to be left
: around in low memory. These two things are usually done by the boot
: programme 'b.com' which can be started either from MS-DOS or directly
: from the boot sector on a floppy.

As b.com can be installed on a floppy boot sector, it should also install to
the boot sector of your plan 9 partition. If this works, you might well
add it to any boot menu type program for selecting different OS. LILO for
example will execute the boot program found in the boot sector of the specified
partition (if it's *not* the linux partition). So does the OS/2 bootmanager
(if you install LILO on your root partition's boot sector, the bootmanager
is able to boot linux).
I think it should be possible to write b.com to the bootsector of the plan9
partition in two ways:

1. Use DOS DEBUG (would anyone else give the exact procedure ?)
2. Use LILO. By editing the LILO config file by hand, you might specify
   any binary file to write to any partition's bootsector.

I admit - this *should* work theoretically. I cannot test it before I return
home (end september). If I'm successful, I'll post a summary.

If someone can try this before, please mail me if it worked.

Bye !

Frank