2 Notes on booting arbitrary REAL mode
6 THIS IS NOT A PART OF THE STANDARD LILO DISTRIBUTION.
8 Arbitrary real mode binaries cannot be loaded directly by LILO. However, if
9 they are made to look like a "kernel image loaded LOW," then LILO can be
10 induced to load them, thinking they are an out-of-date kernel image.
12 Such files are limited to 512K bytes; less if you have a very large Extended
13 BIOS Data Area (EBDA), which intrudes upon the 0x9000 segment. The start
14 addresss of the file MUST be at offset 0 in the file. It will be loaded at
15 0x1000:0000, and jumped to at that address (segment=0x1000, offset=0000) in
18 In order to make the arbitrary binary, call it "foo.b", look like a kernel,
19 the file "pseudo.b", the pseudo kernel header, must be pre-pended; viz.,
21 cat pseudo.b foo.b >foo.img
23 "foo.img" is the bootable pseudo-kernel.
25 In the configuration file, usually '/etc/lilo.conf', the following lines
31 The root directory specification MUST be added (this is a "kernel" after
32 all), to avoid a fatal LILO error message (unspecified numeric value).
33 Optionally, the arbitrary image may be given a name; viz.,
37 The image should then be bootable from the LILO boot prompt.
39 EXAMPLE: Add the LILO diagnostic program "test4.com" to the LILO boot menu.
41 The test program is created by "make floppy", which will write a floppy disk
42 image, but it also may be added to the LILO boot menu with the following
49 cat pseudo.b diagnose/test4.com >/boot/test4.img
51 Then append the following lines to '/etc/lilo.conf':
53 image = /boot/test4.img
57 Now, install the boot loader with the new menu item:
61 The last item on the boot menu should be "diagnostic", which will run
62 "test4.com" from the LILO boot prompt.
64 --John Coffman <johninsd@san.rr.com>