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Re: Lilo and Ext2 woes :)



> On October 6, 1997, Nolan Darilek asked how to remove LILO.

>From _Running Linux_ (p.130)
----------------------------------------------
Removing LILO

If you have LILO installed on your MBR, the easiest way to remove it is
to use MS-DOS FDISK.  The command

	FDISK /MBR

runs FDISK and overite the MBR with a valid MS-DOS boot record.

LILO saves backup copies of your original boot record in the files
/boot/boot.0300(for IDE drives) and /boot/boot.0800 (for SCSI drives).
These files contain the MBR of the drive before LILO was installed.  You
can use the dd command to replace the boot record on the drive with this
backup copy.  For example:

[WARNING SYMBOL]

	dd if=/boot/boot.0300 of=/dev/hda bs=446 count=1

copies the first 446 bytes of the file /boot/boot.0300 to /dev/hda.
Even though the files are 512 bytes in size, only the first 446 bytes
should be copied back to the MBR.

Be very careful when using this command!  This is one of those cases
where blindly executing commands you find in a book can cause real
trouble if you're not sure what you're doing.  Only use this method as a
last resort and only if you're certain that the files /boot/boot.0300 or
/boot/boot.0800 contain the boot record you want.  Many distributions of
Linux come installed with bogus versions of these two files; you might
need to delete them before you install LILO.

The LILO documentation contains further hints for removing LILO and
debugging your LILO configuration.
-----------------------------------------------

I was unclear if this would help you, but now that you can see it, you
can decide for yourself.  

If you restore boot records, manually verify the file creation dates
beforehand.  If they're not from the original install, you may get
something other than what you expected, and that is NOT a good thing.
I've only tried this a few times.  The first time it worked, the other
two times it failed (to do anything).  I haven't tried it with debian. 

Running (dos) fdisk /mbr has worked for me many times and is far safer.
I wasn't sure if you could use that or not, though.

Most of this and a lot more is in:

	/usr/doc/lilo/Manual.txt.gz

David Stern


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