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Re: some questions about lilo



On Thu, Sep 27, 2001 at 02:44:50PM +0200, Christian Eckert wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> How can I find out whether #lilo# has been installed in the 
> mbr or in a partition's boot block.

	Off the top of my head, check /etc/lilo.conf. the "boot=" line will tell
you where LILO is installing its boot block. Most often, you'll have a line
like "boot=/dev/hda" since installing LILO in the MBR is generally the simplest
way to do it. However, I also have Debian's "MBR" program installed, and it
hands off to LILO; hence, my lilo.conf has the line "boot=/dev/hda2"

> 
> Is there probably a way to change it without great complications?

	The short answer is "not really". When the BIOS boots your machine and
hands off to an OS, it looks in the MBR of the first harddisk (usually) for
a bootloader. If there isn't a bootloader installed here, your system probably
won't boot (never has in my experience). However, if you install BootMagic in
the MBR for some reason, you can have BootMagic boot linux at a certain
partition and install LILO there.

> 
> I read in O'Reilly's online catalog #Learning Debian GNU/Linux# that
> lilo can only be installed in the mbr resp. in the boot block of the
> first harddisk. Is this statement still valid ?

	As mentioned above, the statement is still valid if LILO is the only
bootloader on the system.

HTH,
-- 
Mike Alborn <malborn@odoitau.dyn.dhs.org>
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I am the wandering glitch -- catch me if you can.

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