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3. Various tips

Tip: You can do a mdir directly on the netboot image if you use the offset parameter of mtools. In $HOME/.mtoolsrc, put


drive t: file="/tftpdir/dos.nb" offset=4096

Then you can do


mdir t:

4096 is the sum of the header size (512) and the startup segment size (3584). It may be different for other versions of mknbi-dos.

Caveat: For this trick, access other than reading only may not work. You may be able to rewrite things on the "floppy" with mcopy, etc. but the declared size in the header will not get updated. If you wish to modify things you should work on the "floppy" image, then rebuild with mknbi-dos.

Hint: As mentioned before, using an executable compressor like lzexe or pklite might allow you to squeeze more programs onto the "floppy". See a site like Simtel.Net for such programs.

Note: Of course, this technique works for 386s and higher. However you may want to consider netbooting Linux with an initial ramdisk instead of DOG.


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