spouštění linuxu tlačítkem Latitude ON

How boot directly on linux with the “Latitude ON Reader” button:

The E4200 and E4300 comes with two power on buttons, one the standard power on
and another for starting the “Latitude ON”. I was looking for some time a way
to make the second button to start immediately linux while the first to start
the boot manager. However I couldn’t find any information on the topic,
therefore I tried to write it down, hoping that other will find it useful)

In my system now I have the:
– normal “power On” button starts the Windows Boot loader providing two options:

Windows
Linux
Selecting the Linux jumps to the standard grub boot loader of linux

– “ON reader” power button to jump immediately to Linux without any menu

I am not sure if the procedure will work if you have already installed grub
on the sda. In this case you should restore the original boot sector of dell.

I’ve installed xubuntu and my disk looks like:

 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 16 128488+ de Dell Utility
/dev/sda2 17 278 2097152 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 * 278 22753 180531196 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4 22754 30401 61432560 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 22754 24028 10241406 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 24029 24093 522081 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda7 24094 30401 50668978+ 83 Linux

sda3 is the standard Windows partition
sda5 is the / on linux
sda7 is the /home

In the end of the linux installation I have installed grub on the sda5.

Boot with a livecd on linux and copy the boot sector of sda5 with
$ dd if=/dev/sda5 of=boot.lnx bs=512 count=1

Start windows and copy the boot.lnx to c:boot.lnx

As administrator create an entry for linux with the commands
C:> bcdedit /create /d “Linux” /application BOOTSECTOR
It will display the message
The entry {382a30db-2a85–11de-a5c4–00234decffbe} was successfully created.

(of course the entry number will be different, copy/paste the entry id and
type the following commands

C:> bcdedit /set {382a30db-…} device boot
C:> bcdedit /set {382a30db-…} PATH boot.lnx
C:> bcdedit /displayorder {382a30db-…} /addlast
C:> bcdedit /timeout 5

At this point pressing the Power On button you could start Windows or
the grub from linux on sda5

To activate the second “Latitude ON reader” button, download the Latitude Reader
program from the dell support site on E4300 or E4200

http://support.dell.com/…ownload.aspx?…

Install or expand the latitude reader and copy the following files from the
the installation directory (probably C:Program FilesLatitude ON Reader)
1. ion_install.exe
2. bootsect19.orig
3. bootsect.orig
4. stage1
5. stage2/. (the whole path and files)
6. menu.lst
(At this point you could uninstall the Latitude ON reader!)

Apparently the ion_install.exe is a modified version of the grubinstall.exe
program with NTFS support instead of ext3, which knows the “ON reader” button
Copy the above files to the C:boot directory
(this directory should already exists as hidden+system properties)
C:> cd C:boot

Type the command
C:boot> ion_install -d C: –1 C:bootstage1 –2 C:bootstage2 -m /boot/menu.lst

The ion_install will copy the original boot sector to the bootsect.orig file
install a modified grub (stage1) sector and create a default menu.lst
with two options:

1. windows
2. Blacktop reader

Now by pressing the “Power” button it starts the Windows option,
and with the “ON reader” button it jumps to the second entry
Unfortunately the installed grub doesn’t understand the ext3 filesystem but only
NTFS. So the only option is to chainload another boot sector e.g.
the boot.lnx to get the previously installed from linux or any other one.

Start with a Linux live CD, and install an EXTRA grub on the /home
/dev/sda7 partition.
As root copy the files:
$ cp -Rdpvu /boot/grub /home

And install grub

$ grub
root (hd0,6)
find /grub/stage1
setup (hd0,6)
quit

Copy the boot sector of sda7
$ dd if=/dev/sda7 of=boot.sda7 bs=512 count=1

In order to immediately start the first entry in the menu.lst without any menu
modify the /home/grub/menu.lst changing the lines for the timeout and hiddenmenu

timeout 0
hiddenmenu

Copy the boot.sda7 to windows C:
and modify the windows C:bootmenu.lst second entry to

title Linux
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader (hd0,2)/boot.sda7

If you have done everything correctly now you should be able to
boot directly to linux with the “On reader” button

2, http://en.community.dell.com/…9343980.aspx