Re: How does LILO work...
"Price, Erik" <eprice@ptc.com> writes:
> I installed Debian a few weeks ago, then installed SuSE on top of it
> (keeping the partition setup I had created during the Debian
> install). SuSE installed a boot loader for me, so that whenever I
> start the computer I get to choose between Linux and Windows (and
> Linux "Safe Mode", though I'm not familiar with that). Now I've
> reinstalled Debian (still keeping the original partition setup).
>
> Two questions:
>
> 1) If I choose Linux from the current, SuSE-installed LILO, will
> that actually boot up my new Debian installation? Or does LILO
> somehow "remember" that it's looking for SuSE? (If it matters,
> the LILO screen shows the SuSE logo still, would be nice to
> replace that with the Debian whorl.)
You'll probably get nothing, if I read your situation correctly (you
completely overwrote the SuSE install with a Debian install, yes?).
LILO records the physical location on the disk where your kernel is
installed, which is why you also need to re-run it when you install a
new kernel.
> 2) If I use apt-get to install LILO, will that overwrite the old
> LILO or will something else happen... I'm afraid to do too much
> writing on /dev/sda because I don't want to damage my fragile
> Win2k setup, but I'd like to use LILO to boot into Linux rather
> than my Debian Boot Disk.
I believe 'apt-get install lilo' won't actually do anything until you
run 'lilo' as root. You might consider installing GRUB instead,
though; the initial installation is IME a little trickier, but you
never need to reinstall it again, since the bootloader has some
filesystem support.
--
David Maze dmaze@debian.org http://people.debian.org/~dmaze/
"Theoretical politics is interesting. Politicking should be illegal."
-- Abra Mitchell
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