Re: Lilo-problem

[Tom Pfeifer <tplists@optonline.net>]

virtanen wrote:
> 1)
> My machine has got the following OS's and hd's:
> 
> On the hda there is win98 and on the hdb there is 'debian' slink.
> The machine bios cannot boot from hdb.
> 
> 2) Is it possible and safe to install 'lilo' so that I can boot both the
> OS directly from the hard disks?
> 
> Questions:
> 
> a)
> How should the lilo.conf file be written?

> b)
> Is it possible to get lilo 'out from the mbr' (the previous situation
> restored) just by 'lilo -u' command if something goes wrong?


Yes, no problem. You can use essentially the same /etc/lilo.conf as
Johann did, with a couple of possible changes:

1) His root partition is /dev/hdb2. Just substitute yours in the "root="
line.
2) If you're running slink, you have the old Lilo, so the "lba32" line
is not valid. You don't need that anyway if your root partition is below
1024 cylinders.

Here's a start: (I added a couple of minor things)

boot=/dev/hda     (install Lilo in MBR)
compact
install=/boot/boot.b
map=/boot/map
prompt
timeout=100       
vga=normal
image=/vmlinuz    (assumes this is where your kernel is)
  root=/dev/your_root_partition
  label=Linux
  read-only
other=/dev/hda1
  label=win98

Look at the file /usr/doc/lilo/Manual.txt for explanations of options,
or to find others you may want to use.

Lilo automatically backs up the sector that it replaces when you run the
'lilo' command. 'lilo -u' will reverse that process, and put back
whatever was there before. However, unless you specify otherwise, it
will only make the backup the FIRST time you install lilo to any
particular location such as /dev/hda. It names the backup file according
to where Lilo was installed and keeps that file in /boot.

So in your case where you're installing to the MBR (boot=/dev/hda), the
original MBR that you replace will be the one that 'lilo -u' will put
back. In other words, you can install Lilo a 2nd or 3rd or 4th time to
the MBR if you want to tweak things, but still be able to restore the
original MBR with 'lilo -u'. 

Again, see /usr/doc/Manual.txt or 'man lilo' for more info.

Tom