#17 mkdosfs boot sector and -m option for message file

[joergt]

Hello,

i am very satisfied with ms-sys version 2.5.3 because i creates nearly
all usual boot sectors. But for me missing is the boot sector produced
by the mkfs.fat alias mkfs.vfat or mkdosfs command, which is part of
the DOS files system tools. The code for the initial program loader of
that tool just writes a message on screen with instructions for the user.

By default these 2 lines look like:
This is not a bootable disk. Please insert a bootable floppy and
press any key to try again ...

Unfortunately i am not a programmer person. So i am not able to
implement this boot sector in side ms-sys source. The source code for
that loader stands as bytes sequence variable dummy_boot_code together
with assembler instructions in c-source file mkfs.fat.c in source
directory "src" of the DOS files system tools package
"dosfstools-master.zip".
So for an expert it should be easy to add that special boot sector to
the ms-sys tool.

Another feature of the dosfstools i like is the -m option. According
to man page mkdosfs(8) by this option the content of given file (not
exceeding 418 bytes) is used as displayed text instead of standard
english text. So for my german users i can display an according message
text in their own language like:
Dies ist kein startfähiges Laufwerk. Bitte legen Sie ein bootfähiges Medium ein
und drücken Sie eine beliebige Taste, um es erneut zu versuchen ...

So would be nice if the dosfstools bootsector and the "-m" option
could be implemented in a future version of ms-sys tool.

Thanks in advance and regards
Jörg Jenderek

[Henrik Carlqvist]

ms-sys is not intended to replace tools which create file systems like mkfs.fat. Ms-sys is only intended to make disks and file systems bootable. Before running ms-sys on a file system you will need to use some other tool to create the file system. That tool migt add a text explaining that the file system is not bootable, but once the file system has been made bootable by ms-sys or some other tool that text will be overwritten by program code and other messages.