Re: nature of a boot loader
Dai,
Grub and LILO can both chainload to each other just like they can to a windows
boot loader. You can have the other boot loader on another drive or at the
beginning of a partition.
I did just this to make things a little more pleasant to my wife, who is not
hip to windows and finds some of the hackerish things I do to our computers
confusing.
I installed grub on my PC that initially gave a choice of "Windows" or "Linux",
with Windows being the default. So that way she didn't have to touch the
keyboard to get into the OS she's presently most comfortable with, and even if
she does monkey with the menu, it's easy for her to deal with.
Selecting "Linux" from the first grub menu would chain-load to a second copy of
grub that was installed in the first sector of my linux root partition, which
would then allow me to select the kernel to use.
I would often experiment with different kernels, some of which wouldn't work
out all that well, but I could leave them in the second Grub menu without
disturbing my wife, thus achieving complete matrimonial harmony.
The same basic setup would apply to LILO, and should you desire to for some
reason, you could chain load from LILO to Grub, or Grub to LILO.
You can also have the NT boot menu load Grub or LILO by installing first to a
partition, and then copying the bootsector to a file in your Windows partition.
Suppose /dev/hda2 is where you've installed Grub:
dd if=/dev/hda2 of=grubboot.dat bs=512 count=1
then copy grubboot.dat to your Windows partition and add it to your NT or Win2k
boot menu. This probably works on XP too, but I don't have XP.
Yours,
Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting.
http://www.goingware.com/
crawford@goingware.com
Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow.
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