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Re: Re. Total Confusion



Sidney Brooks wrote:

In case it may be of help to someone in the future, this is how I got into my printer troubles.

I installed Windows98, Redhat 6.2, and Debian Potato on three separate partitions of my hard drive. I dutifully made boot floppies for Redhat and Debian. However, Redhat gives you no choice about lilo, it installs it whether you want it or not. It can be removed by using fdisk /mbr in Windows, but I decided that as long as I had it, I would add Debian to it.

I used linuxconf in Redhat, entered the Debian partition,and the location in Debian, i.e. /boot/vmlinuz2.2.19pre17. Linuxconf refused to accept it. I then remembered that in some earlier linux installations, lilo insisted on vmlinuz without anything else. Therefore, I changed vmlinuz2.2.19pre17 to vmlinuz and linuxconf accepted it. Using lilo, I booted into Debian and saw the Debian programs.

What I didn't know was that lilo took the vmlinuz from the Redhat boot directory not the Debian boot directory. It did not care that it had been referred to the Debian partition. I thus ended up with the Redhat kernel and Debian accessories, which didn't work together.

Subsequently, I learned that a could copy vmlinuz2.219pre17 from the Debian boot directory to the Redhat boot directory and then use the full name in linuxconf. With this lilo boots each of the three operating systems correctly.

Why I can't get onto the internet with either version of linux remains a mystery. At the moment, I still feel that it is a BIOS problem, but I can't find anything to change.



I suspect that you're still loading Redhat's root partition, thereby mixing Redhat and Debian. In your "/etc/lilo.conf" file will be a line like:
   root=/dev/hda2

Irregardless of which kernel you're loading (Redhat's or Debian's), this (/dev/hda2) is the partition you're mounting as the root partition, which is probably Redhat's since Redhat is the distro that installed lilo.

To override this, at the LILO prompt, enter something like:
   linux root=/dev/hda3

This will mount root on /dev/hda3 (Debian's) rather than on /dev/hda2 (Redhat's).

This will also mean that "/boot/vmlinuz" as defined in '/etc/lilo.conf" will no longer be found, since previously "/boot" was mounted on "/dev/hda2" instead of "/dev/hda3". I'm not sure what you'll need to do to get around that little glitch.

(The above assumes that Redhat is on /dev/hda2 and Debian is on /dev/hda3; make adjustments accordingly.)


Summary: Basically I still think you're mixing Redhat and Debian, which may (or may not) be at the root of your problems.

Kent




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