ms-sys

1. General
----------

This program is used to create Microsoft compatible boot records. It is able
to do the same as Microsoft "fdisk /mbr" to a hard disk. It is also able to
do the same as Microsoft "sys d:" to a floppy or FAT partition except that
it does not copy any system files, only the boot record is written.
Specifications of boot records is taken from
http://www.geocities.com/thestarman3/asm/mbr/MBR_in_detail.htm

The program is useful when using Linux to restore a backup of a reference
Microsoft Windows installation.

2. Installation
---------------

Step 1, unpack the archive:

tar -xzvf ms-sys*.tgz

Step 2, compile:

cd ms-sys
make

Step 3, become root and install

su (and give password)
make install

3. Examples
-----------

Please note that Windows ME is not useful for making standalone bootable
floppies. However, Win9x and DOS works fine with example 1 and example 3.

Example 1, creating a 1.68 MB bootable floppy:
This example assumes that you have your windows installation mounted at /dosc
and also have mtools and fdformat installed.

fdformat /dev/fd0u1680
mformat a:
ms-sys -w /dev/fd0
mcopy /dosc/io.sys a:
mcopy /dosc/msdos.sys a:
mcopy /dosc/command.com a:


Example 2, restoring a backup to a fresh hard disk:

Step 1, use GNU parted to create your FAT32 partition and file system:

parted (then create partition and file system)

Step 2, write the MBR:

ms-sys -w /dev/hda

Step 3, write the FAT32 partition boot record:

ms-sys -w /dev/hda1

Step 3b, write partition info and drive id to partition:

ms-sys -p /dev/hda1

This step might be needed depending on which program was used to format the
partition. If the program was formatted with gnu parted this step could be
skipped. It is also possible to combine this flag with the previous step
like this: ms-sys -wp /dev/hda1

Step 4, mount your new filesystem:

mount /dev/hda1 /mnt

Step 5, read your backup

cd /mnt; tar -xzvf /path/to/my_windows_backup_file.tgz


Example 3, creating a bootable 2.8 MB floppy image for use with an el-torito
bootable CD:

dd if=/dev/zero of=floppy288.img bs=1024 count=2880
/sbin/mkdosfs floppy288.img
ms-sys -1 -f floppy288.img
su
mount -o loop floppy288.img /mnt
cp msdos.sys /mnt/
cp io.sys /mnt/
cp command.com /mnt/
(it might also be a good idea to add a config.sys and autoexec.bat with
 CDROM support)
umount /mnt
exit
cp floppy288.img cd-files/eltorito.img
mkisofs -b eltorito.img -c eltorito.cat -o cdimage.iso cd-files
(burn the file cdimage.iso to a CD with cdrecord or another program)

4. Documentation
----------------

There is a man-page for ms-sys, and you will get some help by typing:

ms-sys --help

5. Known problems
-----------------

There have been reports about unbootable FAT32 partitions created with
"mformat -F c:". One workaround is to use gnu parted to create the
partition instead. Since version 1.1.3 ms-sys has the switch -p which
is supposed to fix this problem. The problem has also been reported on
partitions formatted with mkdosfs and mkfs.vfat.

There have been yet another problem reported about the -p switch and gnu
parted together with Linux kernel 2.6. The problem is that kernel 2.6 might
report a geometry incompatible with other operating systems. There is a
detailed description of the problem at
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/linux.kernel/msg/404d8683ce302cf2
As a workaround for this ms-sys now has the switch -H to manually set the
number of heads. The next problem is to find out what value for number of
heads to give. If the system was booted by LILO this can be shown by
"lilo -T geom".

There have been reports about problems when compiling against uClibc. More
problem reports or suggestions of fixes are welcome!

Writing Windows 7 NTFS boot records with ms-sys is probably not useful if
the intention is to get a bootable partition.
	    

Q1: I followed all instructions but my system doesn't boot!?

A1: This is most likely because you are running ms-sys in a Linux environment
    with a 2.6 kernel. The problem is that kernel 2.6 might report a geometry
    incompatible with other operating systems. This makes gnu parted write
    incompatible geometry information when formatting the partition. Ms-sys
    has the switch -p which is supposed to fix the geometry information when
    the formatting program has failed writing this correctly, but also ms-sys
    will write the wrong information for the same reason. This is a known
    problem described in the README which also contains a link to a detailed
    description and a possible workaround for the problem.
	    

Date       Version  Comment
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 8/10 2022 2.8.0    No changes, only marked as stable version.

28/6  2020 2.7.0    Compressing man-page with gzip --no-name for
                    reproducibility.
                    Added support to run on macOS/OS X
                    Added NT6.0 FAT32 boot record (Win7/8/10)
                    Added NT6.0 EXFAT boot record (Win8/10)
                    Updated partition information feature for EXFAT and
                    NTFS and also enabled missing FAT16 support.
                    Added X/Open7 POSIX.1-2008 definition to prevent
                    compile warnings in identify.c and exfat.c source
                    code caused by the fileno function.
                    Removed support to alter OEM ID of NTFS boot records
                    since this makes for an unmountable partition.
                    Fixed error in Makefile where debug build didn't work.
                    Changed Makefile to support install on Mac/BSD/Linux.
                    Updated french, german and swedish man pages.
                    Updated french, german and swedish po files.
                    Improved partition device and start sector detection on
                    FreeBSD. Implemented full support for OpenBSD by adding
                    missing code for disk and partition information detection
                    and enabled smart select which wasn't functional.


17/3  2019 2.6.0    No changes, only marked as stable version.

27/2  2016 2.5.3    Added french man page and translation.

16/1  2016 2.5.2    Added german man page,
                    added support for Grub2 and Grub4Dos MBR,
                    added support for KolibriOS MBR and FAT32 boot record,
                    added support for ReactOS MBR, FAT32 and FAT16 BR,
                    added support for Rufus MBR,
                    added experimental support for large sectors ( > 512),
                    now possible to alter OEM ID of FAT and NTFS boot records.
                    now possible to alter Windows Disk Signature in MBR.

26/9  2015 2.5.1    Added support to run on OpenBSD,
                    added german translation.

 5/1  2015 2.5.0    Added support to run on FreeBSD.

 1/1  2015 2.4.1    Added support for FAT32 PE boot record.

24/5  2014 2.4.0    Added support for syslinux GPT MBR.
                    Updated syslinux mbr to version 6.02.

 1/4  2012 2.3.0    Added experimental support for NTFS boot record. This
                    functionality is mostly useful to identify Windows 7 NTFS
                    boot records. Writing an NTFS Windows 7 boot record will
                    most likely not be of much use.

22/1  2011 2.2.1    Modified Makefile to recreate directories lost by CVS
                    Now also doing a sanity check before only writing BPB

13/5  2010 2.2.0    Added support for large disk image files. This version
                    is now considered stable as the BPB problem has had a
                    workaround since version 2.1.5.

14/3  2010 2.1.5    Added support for manually setting the number of heads
                    in BPB

3/10  2009 2.1.4    Win 7 and Vista MBR added
                    Added copyright notice to source files

30/12 2007 2.1.3    Makefile now supports DESTDIR

20/11 2005 2.1.2    Corrected spelling of Gürkan Sengün in man-page and
                    CONTRIBUTORS file.
                    Added a FAQ.
                    Renamed sv_SE.po to sv.po to fix bug described at
                    http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=336813
                    FreeDOS FAT16 and FAT32 boot records added.

3/8  2005  2.1.1    Now the -p switch also writes the number of heads in BPB.
                    Modified Makefile to work with newer version of gcc.
                    Unfortunately it no longer works with older versions of 
                    gcc as the output from the switch -MM has changed.

26/6 2005  2.1.0    Now ms-sys is able to identify an ms-dos MBR with the
                    undocumented F2 instruction.
                    Fixed bug in Makefile which make Makefile fail to install
                    files unless target directories already exists.

5/6  2004  2.0.0    Now ms-sys should compile cleanly also with a 2.6 Linux
                    kernel based distribution.

21/3 2004  1.1.3    Added switch -p to write needed partition information
                    which might be missing when some format programs are
                    used. The program now supports command line switch
                    concatenation, i e "ms-sys -f2 file" instead of
                    "ms-sys -f -2 file".

16/2 2004  1.1.2    Unofficial contributed version with support for new
                    MBRs and better MBR recognition. Instead of completing
                    the work to make this an official release I choose to
                    merge it into my ongoing work.

4/1  2004  1.1.1    Now compiles even if libintl.h is missing
                    Replaced the -k switch with -l (--wipelabel) with the
                    inverted functionality. This functionality was also
                    implemented for FAT12 and FAT16.

20/9 2003  1.1.0    DOS FAT16 boot record added
                    NT FAT32 boot record added

23/2 2003  1.0.2    Documentation update, man-page added

9/8 2002   1.0.1    Fixed problem compiling sv_SE.po with newer versions of
                    msgfmt

4/8 2002   1.0      First public release. Documentation updated with
                    SourceForge addresses for web and email contact.

30/7 2002  0.9      First stable release
	    

This might be done for future releases:

1. Add boot records for other file systems and OSes, NT FAT16? IBM PC-DOS?
   To do this I will need documentation and someone willing to test the new
   features.

2. Add more translations, contributions are welcome!