Bug#53113: hard to install to secondary disk
Package: boot-floppies
Version: 2.2.1
I ran into this today while installing potato to a system where the user
wanted to keep Win98 installed on /dev/hda.
If a root fs is placed on /dev/hdb2, boot-floppies will want to install an
MBR on /dev/hdb. This is wrong, because the BIOS will only look at the MBR
on /dev/hda.
In order to complete the installation I had to switch to VC #2 and do:
cd /target
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/target/lib:/target/usr/lib
ae etc/lilo.conf
[where I changed 'boot=/dev/hdb2' to 'boot=/dev/hda', saved, and exited]
lilo -r . -C etc/lilo.conf
sync
reboot
Things worked just peachy after that, but I can't imagine a normal user
knowing that they would need to do that :)
I suppose this theoretical normal user could have used boot-floppies to
make a boot disk and then used far more normal incantations to edit
lilo.conf and run lilo, but ideally it should just pick the right place to
install bootloader code automatically.
Is the Debian MBR even capable of reaching LILO on a secondary drive?
--
Robert Woodcock - rcw@debian.org
"This Linux thing is unbelievable!" -- CNBC Market Wrapup
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