XOSL: A Test Project

By Thiravudh Khoman

XOSL or "Extended Operating System Loader" (http://www.xosl.org)is a very capable freeware

boot manager written by Geurt Vos of the Netherlands. It has been around for several yearsnow and and is particularly well regarded by the "do-it-yourself" crowd.A year ago, I gave XOSL a "read no docs" try, but quickly ran up against a "wall". Not wishing tospend a lot of time with the program then, and given that Windows 2000's boot manager wasdoing fine for me, I put XOSL aside for another time. Two weeks ago, I unpacked XOSL again(the program hadn't been updated since I last looked it), and promised myself that I wouldn't putit aside again until I figured out how it worked.What follows are some notes that may prove useful to other XOSL users. The article isseparated into two parts: a narrative part that focuses on aspects of design and implementation,and a script part that details (nearly step-by-step) what I actually did. The script parts exist aslinks off of the main narrative part. The intention was to avoid turning this into a 20 page article,while still retaining the level of detail that a XOSL newcomer might wish to reference.

General Features

As is generally true of all boot managers, XOSL is a small program. However, it is not so smallthat it could live entirely in the Master Boot Record (MBR) as do other text-based bootmanagers. XOSL's graphical interface and the fact that it works hand-in-hand with two otherbundled programs - Ranish Partition Manager and Smart Boot Manager - make this all butimpossible.It should also be noted that XOSL is operating system (O/S) agnostic. It doesn't run under anyO/S (boot managers usually don't), but is nonetheless capable of booting almost any PC-basedoperating available. In fact, it can boot multiple copies of a single O/S (naturally, one at time!),often from either a primary or a logical partition. It can also boot a particular O/S, while leavingall other installed O/S'es invisible.

My Test Project

Armed with a Celeron 466 test machine with 128MB RAM and a 10GB hard drive, I designed asystem containing the following:

PartitionUsed ForSizeFile System

Primary 1Windows 98 SE800 MBFAT32Primary 2Windows 2000 Pro1 GBFAT32 -> NTFSPrimary 3Windows XP Pro1.5 GBFAT32 -> NTFSPrimary 4Extended partition5 GBnot applicableLogical 1XOSL16 MBFAT16Logical 2Shared data drive3 GBFAT32Logical 3RedHat Linux 9 swap256 MBnot intializedLogical 4RedHat Linux 9 root1.5 GBnot initialized(

Note:

FAT32 -> NTFS means that the partition was initially formatted as FAT32, but wasconverted to NTFS during the the O/S installation phase.)XOSL will be used to produce a boot time menu that allows me to select from either of the fourO/S'es (Windows 98/2000/XP, RedHat Linux). When I select any of the Windows O/S'es, theother two will be configured so that they are totally hidden from sight. This means that I will onlysee a drive C: (the main Windows drive), a drive D: (the shared data drive on Logical 2), and adrive E: (the CD-ROM drive).

Why Design It This Way?

The overriding reason for the above design was the need to have a separate partition for eachof the four O/S'es, plus a shared data partition. I figured that if I could get this to work, therewould be almost no limit to how many O/S'es I could handle short ofXOSL's limit of 24 menuitems.(By the way, if you're interested in how far this can be taken, I recommend that you read aMaximum PC article of 18-year old Richard Robbins who installed 37 O/S'es onto 6 hard driveswith the help of XOSL! Vide:http://www.maximumpc.com/features/feature_2002-09-24.html.Note: The reason why he was able to exceed XOSL's24 menu item limit was because heinstalled separate copies of XOSL on different drives and chained between them.)Anyway, with a minimum of five partitions, there was no way for me to avoid using both primaryand logical paritions. But first, some background on hard disk partitioning. Unless you resort tonon-standard partitioning methods, each hard disk can support only FOUR so-called "primary"partitions. Each of these primary partitions can be made bootable. If you had only one or twooperating sytsems, this is probably the most logical place you'd put them - except for the factthat FDISK can only deal with one primary partition and later versions of Windows may createlogical partitions even though there's "space" for more primaries.Optionally, one of these four partitions can be a so-called "extended partition" (which wouldleave you with only three primaries). This extended partition can act as a container that holdsany number of so-called "logical" partitions as you have space for. One problem with logicalpartitions is that certain operating systems (notably Windows) will refuse to install there, nor arethey willing to boot from there assuming you found a way to get them there. Fortunately, XOSLIS smart enough to boot such logically-resident Windows for you (albeit a few tricks may berequired), and there are several ways to copy Windows from a primary to a logical partition.Incidentally, certain programs or O/S'es such as XOSL itself andLinux CAN be installed ANDbooted from logical partitions without any fuss. Good for them!One final note. The XOSL documentation actually RECOMMENDS that you install XOSL into anexisting DOS drive. I don't exactly agree with this but I think I know why the author chose torecommend this. If you have a pre-existing computer with Windows on it already and NO freespace left on your hard disk, a DOS drive is really the only place you can install XOSL.Personally, though, I prefer the advice of Filip Komar who wrote the HOWTO/FAQ on XOSL. Herecommends that XOSL be installed into a dedicated area on a logical partition. Doing it thisway not only frees up a primary partition that XOSL would otherwise co-opt, but also keeps itseparate from any particular O/S installation. This allows those O/S'es to be re-imaged in andout without affecting XOSL.

Installation Floppies

To perform the installation, you will need two floppy disks. One needs to be bootable to DOSwhile the other one doesn't - in fact SHOULDN'T - since you'll need as much space as possibleon that diskette for backup information.Although you can use most any kind of DOS to create the bootable Floppy #1, I've chosen toformat it with Windows 98 SE's DOS because I already had it handy and because I wanted tobe able to access FAT32 partitions later when I do some imaging with Norton Ghost. Also,Floppy #1 needs to have CD-ROM support. I'm using Oak Technology's generic CD- ROMdriver and MSCDEX.EXE with my CD drive mapped to drive X:, a drive letter high enough sothat it wouldn't get interleaved with any hard disk letters that might get created.Basically, this is what my two diskettes contained(see detailed notes 1):

Floppy #1

•

Bootable with CD-ROM support

•

FDISK.EXE (from Windows 98 SE)

•

Ranish Partition Manager v2.40 ("Partman")

Floppy #2

•

Not bootable

•

COMMAND.COM (from Floppy #1)

•

XOSL v1.1.5 (without any of the documentation files)(In case you're wondering why COMMAND.COM is on Floppy #2 if it doesn't need to bebootable, it's there to avoid error messages that occur when you exitPartman and DOS isunable to reload COMMAND.COM.)XOSL v1.1.5 comes integrated with Ranish Partition Manager v2.38 beta 1, but I've chosen todownload and use a standalone version anyway for the early setup tasks. You can get it fromhttp://www.ranish.com/part. Meanwhile, you can get XOSL v1.1.5 fromhttp://www.xosl.org(click the "Download" link on the left side).(Note: As indicated earlier, XOSL is freeware, while Partman is "shareware". For individuals andacademic users, you are allowed to "try" Partman for a period of 10 years before you arerequired to buy it for $10 per household, classroom, or department. Or if you're a poor student,you can register it simply by sending Mikhail Ranish a postcard of your college.)

Partitioning and Formatting

For simplicity's sake, I'm going to perform this test on a clean/blank hard disk. I'd recommendthat you NOT (repeat,

NOT

) experiment with this kind of thing on a production hard disk untilyou're more experienced and have a working backup of your installation first.What we're going to do is to create all of the partitions I defined in the previous table, and thenwe're going to format most but not all of the partitions. To start out, I booted with Floppy #1 andthen ran:

FDISK /MBR

. This is the only time I'm going to use FDISK. Also, if you've alwaysthought that FDISK was a difficult program to use, get ready for something 10 times worse!Introducing, Ranish Partman (figure 1). Aargh! This, dear readers, is where I died the first time Itried XOSL.At this point, I would recommend that you go through my detailed notes and "play along" using

PART0SIM

(Partman's non-destructive simulator) if you don't have a spare drive to experimentwith. This was not copied to Floppy #1, so you'll need to play with it on your hard disk whereveryou extracted

PART240.ZIP

. Don't worry, the simulator won't do any harm to your hard disk, butbe careful that you're not using the REAL

PART.EXE

program by mistake!!!The first time you run

PART0SIM

, it will create a simulation data file. You will need to edit the

DISK_SIM.CFG

file so that it matches (or at least approximates) the hard disk I'm using.Specifically, change the 4th line from the top so that the # cylinders and the # of heads matcheswhat you see below. Also, comment out the 5th line with a # sign. This refers to a 2nd hard disk,which I don't have.

# Disk simulation configuration file## Cylinders Heads Sectors DiskFileName1245 255 63 disk_sim.x80# 24 16 63 disk_sim.x81# ??? 16 63 disk_sim.x82

If you DO have a spare drive to experiment with, you may as well run

PART.EXE

from Floppy#1 as I'm doing. Okay, you can start reading mydetailed notes 2now, but please return herewhen you're done.If all went well, congratulations are in order. Hopefully too, your Partman screen lookssomething like this (figure 2- note: this screenshot may be slightly different because I used thePartman simulator). You've just created and formatted a bunch of partitions using the powerful,but admittedly user-unfriendly Partman program! Actually, having used Partman so much thesepast few weeks, I'm beginning to like it more and more.A related note. As general rule, I believe that you should only partition/format your hard disk withenough space to meet your medium term needs. With smaller hard disks, this may mean usingevery iota of disk space. But if you have one of those newer 40+GB hard disks, you might