General Category > Boot Managers

Would PLoP support VHD-files?

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Bobby_ii:
have VHD-files its own boot-sector? It seem's that yes.
Now we may to boot from VHD only on kernel-level (2 ways).
2 boot from VHD now we need to boot "bootmgr" that load only {VHD_file}\Windows\system32\winload.exe or modified linux kernel from vmlite. But VHD-drive (file) should have its own boot-sector (that is used when booting under virtual machine). Is the way to boot from the boot-sector inside VHD-container?

Elmar:
i don't understand how vhd should be supported?

Bobby_ii:
I think, like USB - thru the driver :-) (sorry i'm 0 in programming)
.vhd - virtual drive format, have the same logical structure as physical drives.
   Win7 & Ubuntu may load from .vhd drives in physical environment (don't using virtual machines), but they use boot loader from physical drive & load from .vhd thru kernel, i need to load the boot manager from .vhd (for example, truecrypt boot manager installed in bootrecord of .vhd) and load system installed on .vhd.
I think, there is no big difference between attaching usb-drive & .vhd-container (exept the path to this .vhd container that shoud be given explicitly (sorry for broken english)).

... sorry for my appinion ....
now (i think) structure is: PLOP_boot_loader->USB_CD_drivers->boot_loader_on_selected_drive
structure for support VHD (or others aka wubi) containers should be next:
PLOP_boot_loader->fat_support(extfs2-4,fat**,ntfs :-))->container_structure_support(aka driver)->boot_loader_on_selected_container
so there is 1 important and no_easy_2_relise think - fat support :-(.

Elmar:
ok i understand, but the next problem is to get the vhd file structure to be able to convert the virtual (and i am sure compressed) sectors back to "real" sectors. do you have docs?

Bobby_ii:
"This specification is provided under the Microsoft Open Specification Promise."
VHD - available under free license for developers and users (tr. from russian :-)).
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualserver/bb676673.aspx  (in general)
http://download.microsoft.com/download/f/f/e/ffef50a5-07dd-4cf8-aaa3-442c0673a029/Virtual%20Hard%20Disk%20Format%20Spec_10_18_06.doc   (concrete, doc format)

VHD hardly to be compressed - it is the emulation of physical drive, i.e. empty space in begining. It may use file system compression, for example, ntfs-compression when partitioning/formatting, but it is not .vhd feature.

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