Re: Multi-Boot

["Jens B. Jorgensen" <jjorgens@bdsinc.com>]

I think you mean SCSI ID, not LUN. Logical Unit Numbers are a sub-division
of a single SCSI device. Few SCSI devices use them, although an example
would be a SCSI CD-ROM jukebox. Anyway, if you cared to read Manual.txt.gz
which comes with LILO you'd see that the limitation on booting from other
than the first or second disk is one inherent in your BIOS, to quote:
 
> BIOS restrictions
> - - - - - - - - -
>
> Nowadays, an increasing number of systems is equipped with comparably large
> disks or even with multiple disks. At the time the disk interface of the
> standard PC BIOS has been designed (about 15 years ago), such
> configurations were apparently considered to be too unlikely to be worth
> supporting.
>
> The most common BIOS restrictions that affect LILO are the limitation to
> two hard disks and the inability to access more than 1024 cylinders per
> disk. LILO can detect both conditions, but in order to solve the underlying
> problems, manual intervention is necessary.
>
> The drive limit does not exist in every BIOS. Some modern motherboards and
> disk controllers are equipped with a BIOS that supports more (typically
> four) disk drives. When attempting to access the third, fourth, etc. drive,
> LILO prints a warning message but continues. Unless the BIOS really
> supports more than two drives, the system will _not_ be able to boot in
> that case.*
So, you may indeed be able to do this. In any case you should be able to
use the NT Boot Loader to start linux. This is in fact what I do. Set up
LILO in your linux partition and have it write the boot block there. Eg.,
if your linux partition were on the third scsi disk in the first partition,
a command to do this would be 'dd if=/dev/sdc1 bs=512 count=1 of=linuxboo.bin'.
Then copy that boot block to a file and stick that file in your main NT
partition. Now edit your c:\boot.ini file and add a line for Linux, ala
'C:\linuxboo.bin="Linux"' (assuming you named the file "linuxboo.bin").
As long as your BIOS supports reading from the third drive this should
work.

Glenn Scherb wrote:

I'm trying to set up a dual boot system with Linux & NT 4.0.  My NT system
is configured like this:
...     Adaptec 2940UW
...     LUN(0)  2.1GB
100MB FAT-16 (C:)
2000MB NTFS (E:)
...     LUN(1)  3.25GB
3.25GB  NTFS (D:)
...     LUN(2)  4.33GB
Unpartitioned - Reserved for Linux
...     LUN(5)  Zip Drive

I'd like to set up Linux on LUN(2) and use the NT bootloader.  I've heard
that LILO must run from LUN(0) on a SCSI system in order to boot.  If this
true, then I need to rebuild the system and allocate a boot partition on
LUN(0) for LILO.

I'd also appreciate any suggestions about optimal partition sizes for the
4.3GB Linux volume.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Glenn Scherb
Programmer Analyst
Midwest Research Institute
425 Volker Boulevard
Kansas City, Missouri  64110
(816)753-7600 x1806
gscherb@mriresearch.org
http://www.mriresearch.org

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Jens B. Jorgensen
jjorgens@bdsinc.com