BEeN GRUBed Files

BEeN GRUBed is a Universal OS Installer that runs inside of Windows. BEeN GRUBed was designed by Ben P. 
Dorsi-Todaro the maker of the Bennix Operating System. The original goal was to make an installer that worked
the same way WUBI worked. However do to complications he had to build BEeN GRUBed from the ground up. In the 
process of doing this he discovered how to make it install any OS inside of Windows. 

What BEeN GRUBed uses:
GRUB4DOS (Open Source)
contig.exe (propriotory BEeN GRUBed 2.0 replaces it with Open Source variant called JKDefrag)
JKDefrag.exe (only with newer versions of BEeN GRUBed)
GParted (only with BEeN GRUBed 2.0 and newer)
Batch Files

What BEeN GRUBed can Do:
The primary goal is to be an Alternative to WUBI.
This becomes great addition to the Open Source community because now Netbook users can install an OS without the use
of flash drive.
Since BEeN GRUBed uses GRUB4DOS it has all of the capabilities of Grub Legacy. Older versions of BEeN GRUBed had the 
option to boot Optical Drives. This was replaced after testing. According to GRUB4DOS this is possible. 
BEeN GRUBed can play video while installing. 

Compiling BEeN GRUBed:
BEeN GRUBed was built inside of Windows XP Profesional SP3 Guest OS inside of Virtual Box. Their shouldn't be any
problems building it on any newer versions of Windows. And their should be any problems if the Windows is installed
on the physical hard drive. 

To compile BEeN GRUBed you will need to have the NSIS compiler and some additional plugins. 

Plugins needed. 

KillProc (used if you plan on chainloading the installers with the All In One Installer)
InetLoad (used if you plan on fetching ISO images off the internet)

Other plugins you may want

md5dll (can be nice to use if you want to varify the ISO image md5sum)
NSISdl (nice plugin to have if you want to download the ISO torrent)

Once you have the plugins you need you can just right click on the setup.nsi file and choose to compile with
NSIS. I currently choose to compile BEeN GRUBed with the LZMA (solid compression).

If your adding your own Operating System to BEeN GRUBed you may want to modify the defrag.cmd file. 

Examples of defrag.cmd

contig -a 3 -u bennix-10.04-desktop-i386.iso

contig -a 3 -u bennix-10.04-desktop-amd64.iso

The above is used if you plan on using jkdefrag.exe In this case I've renamed jkdefrag.exe to contig.exe below
is if you use the proprioritory contig.exe program.

contig ubuntu-10.04-desktop-i386.iso

contig ubuntu-10.04-desktop-amd64.iso

making the menu.lst file
The menu.lst file can be as detailed as you want. Please read up on things you can do with Grub and GRUB4DOS. 

Example menu.lst

title Boot Into Windows VISTA
fallback 2
find --set-root --ignore-floppies /bootmgr
chainloader /bootmgr
savedefault --wait=2

title Boot Windows XP
fallback 1
find --set-root --ignore-floppies --ignore-cd /ntldr
map () (hd0)
map (hd0) ()
map --rehook
find --set-root --ignore-floppies --ignore-cd /ntldr
chainloader /ntldr
savedefault --wait=2

title Boot In To Windows 95, 98 or Me
fallback 4
find --set-root /io.sys
chainloader /io.sys
savedefault --wait=2

How Tos:
Boot Optical Drive (According to GRUB4DOS this is possible by adding some lines to the menu.lst)

title Boot From First CDROM
cdrom --init
map --hook
chainloader (cd0)
boot

The Above example shows how BEeN GRUBed can do the job of SBM (Smart Boot Manager) This is handy tool to have
for computers that can't boot off of optical drives. You can make BEeN GRUBed boot floppy drives to by using the
following. 

title Boot From Floppy
chainloader (fd0)+1
rootnoverify (fd0)

BEeN GRUBed doesn't need the defrag tools such as contig.exe or jkdefrag.exe if the ISO image that
BEeN GRUBed is booting is contigous. If the ISO image is not contigous you may want to use jkdefrag.exe

If you choose not to use jkdefrag.exe and the ISO image is not contigous you will need to add --mem to 
menu.lst

Example with --mem

title Install Bennix 32-bit
find --set-root /bennix-10.04-desktop-i386.iso
map --mem (hd0,1)/bennix-10.04-desktop-i386.iso (hd32)
map --hook
root (hd32)
kernel /casper/vmlinuz file=cdrom/preseed/bennix.seed boot=casper iso-scan/filename=/bennix-10.04-desktop-i386.iso quiet splash --
initrd /casper/initrd.gz
boot

Example without --mem

title Install Bennix 32-bit
find --set-root /bennix-10.04-desktop-i386.iso
map (hd0,1)/bennix-10.04-desktop-i386.iso (hd32)
map --hook
root (hd32)
kernel /casper/vmlinuz file=cdrom/preseed/bennix.seed boot=casper iso-scan/filename=/bennix-10.04-desktop-i386.iso quiet splash --
initrd /casper/initrd.gz
boot

I recomend not using --mem and using contig.exe or jkdefrag.exe instead. This is because --mem dumps the ISO into
the memory. If you plan on BEeN GRUBed to work on older computers with little RAM this could cause problems.

Videos and Entertainment
By default BEeN GRUBed was designed to fetch the ISO image of an Operating system off of the Internet. 
This can take sometime if the ISO image is large. To make the time pass when the user is installing BEeN GRUBed
you can add a video or game or what ever else to occupy the user. To do this you will want to modify the setup.nsi
file. 

Examples

ExecShell "" "video.wmv" ;replace video.wmv with the name and format. I recomend WMV becuase it ships with Windows.

ExecShell "" "game.exe" ;make sure the game doesn't require an installer. It should be able to be
played by just clicking on it. 

Sub Menus
You can add sub menus to BEeN GRUBed much the same way as you can with Grub Legacy. 

Example:

title This goes to the submenu.lst
configfile /submenut.lst
savedefault

Slimming down BEeN GRUBed:
The new BEeN GRUBed 2.0 release is 112 MB and the AllInOne installer is 455.4 MB. This can be slimed down by 
removing GParted. I've added the GParted utility to add GUI partitioning tool to BEeN GRUBed. If you want
you can use BEeN GRUBed without it, or you can write batch script that utilizes fdisk.exe for Windows 9.x or
diskpart.exe for Windows NT Systems.

Resources:
If you ever need help you can go to the following places. 
http://www.bennix.net/forums/viewforum.php?f=44&sid=9160f7b17eca749e7607c561ed868a7c (the official BEeN
GRUBed Forum)

http://grub4dos.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page (GRUB4DOS WIKI)

http://kessels.com/jkdefrag/ (jkdefrag home page)

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/ (GParted Home page)

http://nsis.sourceforge.net/Main_Page (NSIS WIKI)

you can also contact the BEeN GRUBed maker at ben@bennix.net

If you need a precompiled version of BEeN GRUBed for your prefered OS I will build for fee. I currently charge
$20.00. Additional fees may occure depending on complexity and requirements.