How to install FreeDOS in Linux dualboot with GRUB, not having cdrom or floppy drive

If you need instructions to do it the optimal way, scroll down.

The pioneer way

FreeDOS comes in form of .iso images. My laptop has no cd drive and installing from unetbootin'd install cd to flash didn't work (it booted from flash ok though), so i had to go creative. Here's what i did:

• Downloaded FreeDOS full cd from official site
• dd'ed my 2gb pen drive in .img file (for speed)
• qemu -cdrom fdfullcd.iso -hda dump.img
• Repartitioned pendrive with xfdisk and installed FreeDOS on it
• dd'ed dump back to pendrive
• Made a free FAT32 partition on laptop
• Booted FreeDOS pendrive on it
• sys d:
• Then i tried to cp the fdos/ directory on new partition, but it hang up halfway through. So i booted Linux and happily copied the files over.
• Set up grub to boot FreeDOS using chainloader
• Ready!

The optimal way

What you need for the task is:

• Any FreeDOS bootable media. I recommend using unetbootin to convert one of FreeDOS cds (you actually need only base cd) to bootable pendrive. Alternatively you can try using sys-freedos-linux to make the partition bootable
• Free FAT32 (or 16) partition
• This archived full freedos installation

Steps

• Boot your FreeDOS media
• Type sys d: where d is your FAT32 partition

OR

• Use sys-freedos-linux (see above) on FAT32 partition

Then

• Boot linux
• Extract files from freedos.tar.bz2 to partition.
• Edit /boot/grub/menu.lst

Add the following:

title FreeDOS
rootnoverify (hd1,2)
chainloader +1
makeactive

Where (hd1,2) is your FAT32 partition.

Now you should be able to boot FreeDOS from GRUB.