I decided to give ReactOS a try but the spare desktop machine with Gentoo Linux installed to the sata drive without floppy drive (I do have a sata cdrom). I have to dig out old hardware to fulfill current version requirements.
After lengthy test on all the used hardware, I am out of luck to found out 4 used IDE cdrom and some floppy drives all dead (This is good as a house keeping task)
At last, I got one 2G ide harddisk for the installation with a ps/2-usb mouse converter and a spare AGP card (nVidia RIVA TNT2 Model 64/Model 64 Pro) to work with.
Hardware
P4 2.4G, 512M RAM
Intel 965 chipset motherboard with 2 ide + 2 sata channel
Onboard VGA (915)
Onboard LAN (RealTek 8139C)
Downloads
The latest trunk build: http://reactos.org/getbuilds/
p7zip package to extract the downloaded .7z file
Prepare IDE harddisk
Note: The 2G harddisk connected to Primary IDE channel and the SATA drive is /dev/sdb while the IDE drive is /dev/sda
Boot into Linux (or other OS with harddisk & iso image utils), login as root (or prefixed with 'sudo' as user):
- Extract 7zip file
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p7zip -d /path/to/bootcd-53983-dbg.7z
- Create partition table with ID type 6 (FAT16). If the drive capacity is larger, set ID type b/c (FAT32) instead.
*You may use gui partition tools like gnome-disk-utility to edit and format the partitions.Note: only the first partition formatted with FAT can be used for the installation. So, create a large partition for ReactOS first. Depends on the drive capacity, create partition a few MB larger than the ISO image will be sufficient for the bootcd.Code: Select all
fdisk /dev/sda
- Format the partitions
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mkdosfs -n ReactOS -F 16 /dev/sda1 mkdosfs -n BootCD -F 16 /dev/sda2
- Mount the FAT partition which act as bootcd
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mkdir /mnt/bootcd mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/bootcd
- Mount the ISO image
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mount -t iso9660 -o loop /path/to/bootcd.iso /mnt/cdrom
- Copy bootcd files
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cp -a /mnt/cdrom/*/mnt/bootcd
- Check Free Loader binaries (for old versions only)
If you got freeldr.sys and setupldr.sys, then skip next step.Code: Select all
ls /mnt/bootcd/loader/*sys
- Get missing freeldr.sys
If you only got setupldr.sys in last step, you have to download the same livecd build version to get freeldr.sys.Code: Select all
umount /mnt/cdrom mount -t iso9660 -o loop /path/to/livecd.iso /mnt/cdrom cp /mnt/cdrom/loader/freeldr.sys /mnt/bootcd/loader
- Update Grub
If you are not using Gentoo, instructions may need minor changes.
Mount Linux boot partition if not mountedAppend code belowCode: Select all
mount /boot vi /boot/grub/grub.conf
Save and exit.Code: Select all
title InstallCD root (hd1,1) makeactive kernel /loader/setupldr.sys title ReactOS root (hd1,0) makeactive kernel /loader/freeldr.sys
- Get ready for reboot
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umount /mnt/cdrom umount /mnt/bootcd reboot
Select 'InstallCD' from Grub menu to boot.
Everything goes smooth until setup Free Loader. I have to press F3 to quit installation and reboot.
If you are lucky, skip the next step.
Setup Free Loader
Reboot to Linux.
Login console as root or use sudo:
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mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/bootcd
mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/cdrom
cp -a /mnt/cdrom/loader /mnt/bootcd
cp -a /mnt/cdrom/freeldr.ini /mnt/bootcd
Change
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DefaultOS=Setup
Timeout=0
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DefaultOS=ReactOS
Timeout=1
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Setup="Setup"
[Setup]
BootType=ReactOSSetup
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ReactOS="ReactOS"
[ReactOS]
BootType=Windows2003
SystemPath=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\reactos
If you don't have COM port and/or like to know why the bootup fails on screen, append
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Options=/DEBUGPORT=SCREEN
Note: The SystemPath can be compiled from Grub (hdx,y) settings with rdisk(x+1)\partition(y+1)
Reboot
Select 'ReactOS' from Grub to continue setup.