Following our post about FreeDOS virtualization, we now detail us the steps to boot the host PC with the virtualized hard disk.
1- Do a copy of the virtual hard disk’s image.
$ cd /tmp
$ cp -v /vm/KVM/freedos.img .
`/vm/KVM/freedos.img' -> `./freedos.img'
2- Compress the image : mandatory (¡.3)
freedos.img: 76.6% -- replaced with freedos.img.gz
3- Create a directory near SysLinux in which the image will be stored.
$ sudo mv -v /tmp/freedos.img.gz /boot/OS/
`/tmp/freedos.img.gz' -> `/boot/OS/freedos.img.gz'
4- Add a new sub-menu into SysLinux. (¡.4)
$ sudo nano /boot/syslinux/syslinux.cfg
- enter the following text at the end of the file
LABEL freedos
MENU LABEL Free^DOS
LINUX memdisk
INITRD ../OS/freedos.img.gz
APPEND raw
- save the file then quit the editor : press function keys [ F3 ] then [ F2 ]
5- Restart computer …
6- When the menu of SysLinux is displayed : press the [ D ] key to boot FreeDOS. (¡.1) (¡.2)
(¡) Remarks
- The image is first loaded into RAM then mapped as the C: drive.
Any file changes will be lost during next reboot.
Use floppies, USB thumb and flash cards to save your files.
- The amount of available disk space is what was left during the last virtualization.
- The virtual hard disk must be compressed.
SysLinux loops if booting a not compressed image.
- A SysLinux configuration file is provided in the wiki.