Configuration

• General
• Look
• Images
• Files
  • Common options
  • Linux options
  • Bootsector options

Look

banner=banner

This is what Choose-OS shows on top of the menu.
The default is "Choose-OS v0.8 BootUp Menu.". I'm sure you wanna change it to a more interesting one, such as "Whatcha wanna play today with ?",

infoline=on | off

Do you want to see copyright and keyhelp on the bottom of the screen. If not, set this to off. Else set the this to on (default).

color=color

Set default color used.

selection=color

Set selection color. Can only be one of the eight first colors.

background=type,file

Use <file> as background image. <type> is either dump, in case of binary file, or ascii in case of plain ascii text.

menupos=column,row

Set menu position. (0,0) is the topleft corner of the screen.

timerpos=column,row

Set timer position. (0,0) is the topleft corner of the screen.

Files

Images

image_type is the type of the image.
• linux, in case of normal Linux kernel
• big_linux, in case of bzImage
• bootsect, in case of device bootsector
• bootfile, in case of a file that is a bootsector.
  At the moment it doesn't matter which one you use, bootsect or bootfile.

name is the name of the image, i.e. the text shown in the bootup menu.

Common image options

color=color

Set the color used for this image in the menu.

hotkey=hotkey

Set the hotkey for this image.

position=column,row

Set the position of this image on screen, if it's to be somewhere else on the screen instead of in the menu.

loader=loader

Use OS-specific loader <loader> instead of the default.

image=image

This tells the file/device to be booted. In case of linux this is the kernel and in case of bootsector, a 512-bytes long file or a block device.

Linux options

cmdline=cmdline

Set Linux command line.

initrd=file [,address]

Asks Choose-OS to load <file> as initial ramdisk.
If no address is given, or address is 'top', the ramdisk will be loaded on top of memory.
Address may also be a memory address >2M (preferably>4M) ( 6M and 8M for bzImages).
You must have a 2.x kernel for this feature.

Bootsector options

THESE ARE ALL UNTESTED OR OTHERWISE DANGEROUS FEATURES.
YOU ARE EXPERIMENTING WITH THESE AT YOUR OWN RISK. PLEASE BACKUP ALL IMPORTANT DATA ON YOU HARDDISKS BEFORE TRYING THESE.
THESE ARE NOT COMPILED IN BY DEFAULT, SO YOU MUST RECOMPILE.


dos4boot=yes | no

This option is used to tell DOS version 4.0+ (and OS/2?) to boot of the second harddisk, /dev/hdb.

rewrite=yes | device

This is intended for partition table active flag/type modification. Can be used to hide DOS from Windog 95/NT.

If the argument is 'yes', /dev/hda will be selected.
In other case, the argument is a block special device,
whiches MBR is to be modified. It must be the whole device, not a partition.
How to use

THE OS MUST USE BIOS FOR DISK ACCESS FOR THESE TO WORK:

swapfd=yes | no

Swap first and second floppy drive (/dev/fd0 and /dev/fd1).

swaphd=yes | no

Swap first and second harddisk drive (/dev/hda and /dev/hdb).

Miscalleneous topics

• QuickStart guide
• Creating a bootfloppy