Re: Boot disk swiped, how to make one?

[Jim Bray <jb@as220.org>]

On Fri, 12 Mar 1999, David B. Teague wrote:

> 
> Folks:
> 
> I installed Slink on my system but had not installed LILO
> to make it bootable directly from the HD. Someone swiped the
> boot disk. 
> 
> Question:  Is it possible, given the contents of the /etc/fstab 
> file and a knowledge of where the  kernel is located 
> (/boot/vmlinuz-2.036) to run LILO from a boot disk -- say
> "Tom's Unix on a floppy" and make the floppy boot the kernel 
> on the hard disk?


  I believe this is not possible with lilo, because it actually builds a
map of the sectors on disk that the kernel lives in. Thus if one defrags
and doesn't run lilo afterwards, one's disk becomes non-booting.

  If you have any sort of rescue disk, with linux on it, you can
tell lilo something like

vmlinuz root=/dev/hda1

 and then run lilo once your system is up.

  Grub, the Grand Unified Boot Loader, actually understands ext2 (altho'
when I tried it it didn't do symlinks, and I like to have vmlinuz be a
symlink). So if you are using Grub, these problems don't arise. Grub
should eventually replace lilo.


--Jim	     http://as220.org/jb
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