Re: linux debian installation preserving dos

[Joost Kooij <kooij@mpn.cp.philips.com>]

On Thu, 9 Apr 1998, Valerie CAYOL wrote:

> Thank you, It worked, I preserved my dos pqrtition and
> I mounted new linux partitions. the dos partition is visble from
> linux. However, lilo does not allow to boot on dos
> anymore. Instead I have to boot on a floppy !!!

Hi,

Booting from floppy is a hassle, it's so much slower than booting from the
harddisk. But you see how it is still convenient to have a boot disk
available for situations like these. 

Now lets try to make lilo work, so you don't need the bootdisk all of the
time. First, this is an excerpt from the lilo.conf(5) manpage; you can
view it with the command "man lilo.conf": 

--- lilo.conf ---

LILO.CONF(5)                                         LILO.CONF(5)

NAME
       lilo.conf - configuration file for lilo

DESCRIPTION
       This  file, by default /etc/lilo.conf, is read by the boot
       loader installer lilo (see lilo(8)).

       It might look as follows:

              boot = /dev/hda
              delay = 40
              compact
              vga = normal
              root = /dev/hda1
              read-only
              image = /zImage-1.5.99
                      label = try
              image = /zImage-1.0.9
                      label = 1.0.9
              image = /tamu/vmlinuz
                   label = tamu
                   root = /dev/hdb2
                   vga = ask
              other = /dev/hda3
                   label = dos
                   table = /dev/hda

       This configuration file specifies that lilo uses the  Mas
       ter Boot Record on /dev/hda. (For a discussion of the var
       ious ways to use lilo,  and  the  interaction  with  other
       operating  systems,  see user.tex from the lilo documenta
       tion.)

--- lilo.conf ---

As you can see, there is a section "other" in this lilo.conf. I bet that
it is still missing in yours, because you have not added it yet.

Let's suppose that your dos partition is on /dev/hda1. In that case, you
would add to your /etc/lilo.conf:

    other = /dev/hda1
        label = dos
        table = /dev/hda

The above example also carries a line:

    delay = 40

Which specifies that you have 4 seconds to hit a key, at which point lilo
will wait for you to type the name of the image to boot. If you hit Tab,
it should print a list of possble images. Type dos and hit enter to boot
dos. If you just hit enter or don't make lilo ask for a bootimage name,
lilo will boot the deafualt image, that is the one that appears first in
/etc/lilo.conf (can also be set with the "default = " keyword.)

You can setup lilo to always prompt for a bootimage. If you want that,
remove the "delay = " line and replace it with:

    prompt
    timeout = 300

This makes lilo always prompt and wait 30 seconds for you to hit a key
before it boots the default image. If you leave out the "timeout = "
keyword, it will never stop waiting for you to specify an image or hit
enter. That also means that you can't do a remote reboot.

To make the boot setup even more fancy, you can write a message to print
to the screen before the prompt and create a simple bootmenu. Suppose you
wrote the message to be printed to the file /boot/bootmessage.text, you
would add the following line to lilo.conf:

    message = /boot/bootmessage.text

After adding those lines to /etc/lilo.conf, rerun lilo (I usually run it
like this: "lilo -v -v" so I get to see some details about lilo's
actions.) 

Always, when you make a change to your lilo setup, rerun lilo, so the
changes are incorporated in the map file and the partition tables. Not
running lilo after you made changes is like forgetting to put the plug in:
it's the most obvious mistake to make and for that reason the most
difficult to diagnose. 

Cheers,


Joost


--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-request@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org