Boot loader options

[warmongr]

Forum,

I am working on a project which requires me to have laptops that can dual boot. One of the deliverables is to have a centralized management station that tells the client laptops which configuration to boot into. For instance I can ssh to the linux partition use SED to modify the grub.conf file to point to the windows partition as default and then send a reboot. Voila I now have a windows laptop however I can't ssh into the windows partition and modify a grub.conf file to tell it to boot into linux as there is no such thing in windows. So to my question:

"What other bootloaders exist that I can use to boot either OS via automation? Or what other options does this forum suggest?"

Yes I realize that is two questions and thanks for any assist.

W

 

[geirendre]

Maby you can move the /boot/grub/menu.lst to a central server where you can control it. maby keep several versions,
and just have a sym-link on each PC pointing to this file?
If I understood your question right.
Some sort of netbased boot should be the right solution....

 

[warmongr]

How would you see this working if the central server is running NFS and the network is not loaded until way after the boot loader?

btw, thanks for the reply.
W

 

[Kozusnik]

I think I'd look at Xen or VMWare. They're both Free now. Then you could run both OSs at the same time.

Mark

 

[LawnBoy]

If grub.conf was on a FAT32 partition both OS's could write to it...

 

[warmongr]

Thanks for all the responses. XEN is too immature at this point and virtual machines do not give good gaming resolution video that's required for this project.

Regarding grub.conf on FAT32; How do you see that being accomplished? Does that work. Anyone else installing their grub.conf on a FAT32 partition?

W

 

[Kozusnik]

LawnBoy: I hadn't thought of that. Good idea.

warmongr: I understand and agree that neither would suit your needs. I didn't realize that the apps you were running would need to be video intensive.

Mark

 

[LawnBoy]

It's a pretty mediocre idea, considering I have no idea how to accomplish it...

 

[warmongr]

Kozusnik: Your idea to run virtual machines was a good one. I failed to give you all the information. Thanks for the input.

I am still not sure how/if the fat32 grub thing would work. Somehow I don't think so but if anyone has information on this I'd be willing to test it out here and report back to the group. I guess I was looking for maybe an alternative to grub or lilo like bootmagic or some other variant that works from the command line on both linux and windows so it can be scripted. Basically, I have a daemon running on both the windows and linux side that listens for commands and then executes those commands on the hosts. That would be ideal.

W

 

[Kozusnik]

Maybe have hda as the win drive, hdb1 as a fat32 linux drive which is mounted as /, then build the usual ext2/3 partitions as hdb5=/usr, hdb6=/var, hdb7=/home, etc. (I mean "et cetra", not "/etc").

The grub.conf is in /etc/grub/... correct? If that's the case, it would be accessible by both OSs. For Linux, it would be /etc/grub/grub.conf...for windows, it would be D:\etc\grub\grub.conf.

Sound plausible?

Mark

 

[LawnBoy]

Could you do this using a boot floppy?

http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/grub-legacy-faq.en.html#q4

 

[warmongr]

Koz: This might work. I'll set that up some time next week and see if it works. What the heck right?

Lawn: Unfortunately this may be a system deployed to students doing training. It has to be simple, graceful and unbreakable. That is why we have created our management daemon to run on both partitions with the ability to send it commands from an instructor type of station.

W

 

[theEclipse]

Interestingly enough, I am trying to work out a solution to this very same problem.

I thought about setting up a FAT partition for just the grub, but I would rather not reinstall both os' just to do this so I am probably going to go the floppy route.

In my case it is more of a server, but I still want to be able to run the os on the system level (not virtual).

Please let me know how it works out.

Robert Carpenter
Remember....eternity is much longer than this ~80 years we will spend roaming this earth.
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http://www.robertcarpenter.net