Program that runs before OS

[sumone4life]

What language/how would i go about making a utility/program that runs before the OS. An example is a program like CIA commander that gets priority in the boot process and runs before the OS.

How would i go about creating one? Im curious on the language and the process.

[Siddhartha]

you mean like GRUB?

[sumone4life]

i dont know what it is...all i want is to make a utility that i can put on a floppy that will run before the OS

[Siddhartha]

oh....well of course you'd have to have the disk in b4 u started up and launch it off of boot settings (believe thats F12, maybe F2) and then, if you don't fell like doing the same next time, change the settings to only launch your main OS when you push *insert whatever hotkey you want here. May you enlighten me with the contents of this floppy disk in order for me to further research and see what is out there?

Oh and by the way, GRUB is an acronym for GRand Unified Bootloader. For multiple OS use. The original "GRUB" has been superceded by GNU GRUB Click me to visit old site, with link to new one

[jvanegmond]

GRUB is dumb.. I prefer LILO.

[Siddhartha]

why? look how much cooler it looks :

G.R.U.B.

L.I.L.O.

[jvanegmond]

why? look how much cooler it looks :

G.R.U.B.

L.I.L.O.

That's my point.. Look how simple LILO is!

[dabus]

You can add graphics to lilo if you want to. I think knoppix puts such a thing into the default config.

You could also look fort ranish (?) part, that includes a dos-like boot-manager or the bsd-boot-loader or those from qnx/beos/...

[jvanegmond]

You can add graphics to lilo if you want to. I think knoppix puts such a thing into the default config.

You could also look fort ranish (?) part, that includes a dos-like boot-manager or the bsd-boot-loader or those from qnx/beos/...

Yeah, I've tried it.. but LILO crashed and I had to reinstall Linux in order to get past the MBR.. =/

[Siddhartha]

Yeah, I've tried it.. but LILO crashed and I had to reinstall Linux in order to get past the MBR.. =/

hahahahaha your precious LILO crashed!!!!!!!!!!

L.I.L.O.

Me Knoppix

***Edit***

My stupid spelling in the morning

Edited April 4, 2007 by Nikolai

[jvanegmond]

lol, I guess that was a bit blunt..

Edited April 6, 2007 by Manadar

[cppman]

What language/how would i go about making a utility/program that runs before the OS. An example is a program like CIA commander that gets priority in the boot process and runs before the OS.

How would i go about creating one? Im curious on the language and the process.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qi...05130230AAyXy7m

[Zedna]

Look at XOSL boot manager. It comes also with sources.

Here is link: http://www.ranish.com/part/xosl.htm

Note: original www.xosl.org is down

[dabus]

@Manadar: Why didn't you:

get a floppy/cdrom

boot it

maybe use dd to copy an "image" of your mbr back to disk

use chroot

edit the lilo.conf

lilo to reinstall the loader

reboot

I think that should do the trick.

I know that it's a little bit late and the topic is nearly dead, but I'm just curious.