Re: boot loader problem

[Alan Chandler <alan@chandlerfamily.org.uk>]

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On Friday 22 November 2002 11:23 pm, Rebecca Riall & Jeff Melton wrote:
>
> Thanks for writing.  The documentation for Debian 2.2 actually does say
> there's an "mbr" boot loader, although I'd never heard of it until I got
> Debian.

Nor had I, but I suspect that is what is causing your existing prompts.  There 
is confusing terminology because MBR normally refers to the first block on a 
disk - in this case it is refering to the code that is loaded into the first 
block on the disk

...

> Right now that line from lilo.conf says boot=/dev/hda.  Maybe that's the
> problem, since hda isn't the name of a partition?  Should it say
> boot=/dev/hda5, my root partition for Linux?


NO  - remember the terminology for lilo is confusing because the same name is 
used for two things.

1) The set of programs that load up during boot before handing control over to 
the operatating system just loaded.

2) The program that writes 1) to the hard disk based on the parameters in 
/etc/lilo.conf.

what boot does is tell 2) where to install 1).  In this case /dev/hda is the 
mbr of the first ide drive.

Actually - you can tell lilo several different images to load once it is past 
the mbr stage.  The following shows most of my lilo.conf (I get prompted with 
a menu of 4 operating systems (Linux, Linux in single user mode, and older 
version of linux as a backup in case of problems and Windows) to boot from 
and 5 secs to choose before the default (Linux) is loaded.  I reckon if you 
set something like this  (particularly the "other" stanza at the end) in to 
your /etc/lilo and  run lilo you will get it dual boot.  (You can make 
Windows the default if you would prefer.




# Support LBA for large hard disks.
#
lba32
# Specifies the device that should be mounted as root. (`/')
#
root=/dev/hda3
# Installs the specified file as the new boot sector
# You have the choice between: bmp, compat, menu and text
# Look in /boot/ and in lilo.conf(5) manpage for details
#
install=/boot/boot-menu.b
# Specifies the location of the map file
#
map=/boot/map
# Specifies the number of deciseconds (0.1 seconds) LILO should
# wait before booting the first image.
#
delay=20
#prompt with menu prompts from above with 5 sec timeout
prompt
timeout=50
# Specifies the VGA text mode at boot time. (normal, extended, ask, <mode>)
vga=normal



default=Linux

image=/vmlinuz
        label=Linux
        initrd=/initrd.img
        read-only
image=/vmlinuz
        label=single
        initrd=/initrd.img
        read-only
        append=single

image=/vmlinuz.old
        initrd=/initrd.img.old
        label=old
        read-only
        optional

# If you have another OS on this machine to boot, you can uncomment the
# following lines, changing the device name on the `other' line to
# where your other OS' partition is.
other=/dev/hda1
  label="Windows"

- -- 
Alan Chandler
alan@chandlerfamily.org.uk
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