[mythtv-users] OT Bootloader that can detect how machine was started?

John Biundo johnbiundo at sbcglobal.net
Mon Apr 10 22:25:37 UTC 2006


Dawson, Guy wrote:
> Does anyone know of a way of have a PC boot into Windows if the power button is pressed, or into Linux in response to a WakeOverLan event.  

Well if you can relax your requirements a bit, you might be able to use 
an approach that I've just implemented.

It uses some perl scripts and a technique from the site 
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-osswitch/

The upshot is that you install some utilities that work with grub to 
automate rebooting from windows to linux or vice versa.  Once the 
scripts and grub are set up properly, you can easily do things like: 
create a windows shortcut that reboots to linux; create a linux desktop 
icon that reboots to windows; automatically switch back and forth 
between windows and linux with each reboot, schedule an automatic reboot 
into the specified OS with a windows task scheduler or cron job.

I do the latter to reboot my wife's machine into linux to run mythtv 
each morning so she can watch her recordings while on the treadmill. 
She either uses the remote control (the "red button") to reboot to 
windows, or if she just leaves the machine, a cron job reboots her to 
windows at the appointed hour.

If you can leave your machine powered up all the time, and can run your 
jobs on a schedule, you might be able to use this approach to 
automatically switch to linux in the wee hours, run some mythtv 
transcode jobs, then switch back to windows before the tykes need their 
Sims fix ;-)

HTH,
john


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