Re: Using LILO...

[Max HYRE <mhyre@dasw.com>]

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   Dear Mr. Scheetz:

   Oh, goodie---now maybe I can pay back some of the help you've given in the
past :-).  The following assumes that your failure mode is that booting still
puts you right into DOS with no indication that LILO ever runs.  (I.e., you
don't see ``LILO'' appear on the screen at boot time.)  If I'm mistaken, send
more info.

   For my money, the best way to start out using LILO is to edit lilo.conf to
say:

    boot=/dev/fd0

instead of what I suspect it now says:

    boot=/dev/hdb

then
    o put a floppy in
    o run lilo (as root :-))
    o set your BIOS to try to boot from A: before C:
    o leaving the floppy in, reboot

If this doesn't work the way you want, fiddle with lilo.conf until it does.

   The _big_ advantage is that you're only screwing up a floppy if something
goes wrong---you pretty much can't render your hard drive unbootable.

   Once things are arranged to your satisfaction, you're ready to decide where
to put the LILO boot loader on your hard drive.  Since you have only a single
DOS partition on hda, your choices are:

    boot=/dev/hda

using the current partitioning setup, or repartition (using FIPS to avoid
backup/restore) to give yourself a small second partion (it doesn't have to be
Linux, it could even be a second DOS partition), say /dev/hda2, and say

    boot=/dev/hda2

The advantage of the latter setup is that you don't touch your DOS MBR---just
set hda2 to be the active partition, and the DOS MBR will hand control over to
LILO.  Then if something goes wrong (like, say, you install Windows 95), it
doesn't touch LILO---you can use DOS's fdisk to reset hda2 as the active
partition, and Shazam!, LILO's back in the saddle.

   This is the Reader's Digest condensed version of what works for me---if
you'd like more detail, don't hesitate to write.

- -- 
			Sincerely yours,

				Max Hyre

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