Troubleshooting › Alternative DOS Boot Loader bootdos.f12

Alternative DOS Boot Loader bootdos.f12

Symptom:

The installation of a new operating system starts immediately. This behavior is not desired in some cases.

Solution:

With the alternative DOS boot loader bootdos.f12, the user in front of the target can press CTL F12 within a 4-second time frame to start the OS installation.

Otherwise, bootdos.f12 will boot from the local hard disk and the OS installation job is postponed to the reboot when pressing CTL F12.

To use the bootdos.f12 in a sequence of reboots during an OS installation, the first boot image osinstal.2 has to be changed into an indirect boot image with its own loader.

To change the boot image osinstal.2 into an indirect image

1. Create a directory osinstal.2 in the boot image store of the Scalability Server (Boot Server).
2. Create a subdirectory osinstal.2\undi.
3. Move the DOS boot image UNDI\osinstal.2 to osinstal.2\undi\osinstal.2.
4. Copy the boot loader bootdos.f12 from the boot image store into the osinstal.2 directory.
5. Edit a description file named osinstal.2 in the UNDI directory according to "OS Boot Image Extension for Boot Images Consisting of Multiple Files."

Contents of the osinstal.2 description file:

[BootImage]
Boottype=DOS
BootImageDir=osinstal.2
BootLoader=bootdos.f12
SwitchFile=osinstal.2

Images:

DOSBOOT //Boot image store

UNDI //RAM disk image files DOS, WINPE, LINUX

osinstal.2 //description file

ostinstal.3 //real 1.44 Mb DOS floppy image

osinstal.2

bootdos.f12

undi

/osinstal.2 //real 1.44 Mb DOS floppy image