Re: about lilo

[David Z Maze <dmaze@debian.org>]

Sidney Brooks <sidneybrooks@yahoo.com> writes:

> Please help me to understand lilo. If one loads lilo on the root
> sector of a partition, does this mean that it has no affect on the
> MBR?

Yes.

> Exactly, what does it do when it is on a partition?

When the MBR picks a partition, the "standard" thing to do is to load
the first sector off the partition and run it, so LILO installs there.

> Presumably, it specifies the kernel to be used on the partition, but
> how do you get to the partition in the first place?

The "standard" PC bootloader (e.g., the one you'd get by running fdisk
/mbr from DOS) boots from the first partition with the "active" flag
set.  If you're looking for something free, slightly more powerful,
but still very simple, look at the boot sector in the 'mbr' package,
which will let you choose one of the four primary partitions to boot
from but has the same default behavior.

> The reason for these questions is because I want to upgrade my
> kernel without changing the MBR.

You can do that.  But if you're using LILO, you can't upgrade your
kernel without reinstalling LILO's boot block (either in the MBR or at
the start of the partition).  You don't need to with GRUB, but the
configuration is Different.

-- 
David Maze         dmaze@debian.org      http://people.debian.org/~dmaze/
"Theoretical politics is interesting.  Politicking should be illegal."
	-- Abra Mitchell