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Re: Urgent :Dual boot Debian+Mandrake with lilo



On Thursday 22 July 2004 01:55 pm, Vijaya S wrote:

>    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
> /dev/hda1   *           1       21164    10666624+  83  Linux
> /dev/hda2           21165       23287     1069992    5  Extended
> /dev/hda3           23288       42663     9765504   83  Linux
> /dev/hda5           21165       23287     1069960+  82  Linux swap

> I want to edit lilo to get both Mandrake and Debian in the bootloader
> menu.
> How can i get my Mandrake back ..I cannot boot Mandrake again.

I assume you want to boot Mandrake with a Mandrake-tweaked kernel, and Debian 
with a Debian-tweaked kernel, yes?  (Recommended.)

You'll have to do more than the last poster implied.

First, make a copy of /etc/lilo.conf before you start screwing with it.

cp /etc/lilo.conf /etc/lilo.conf.saveass

Now, the easiest thing is to pick ONE distro to manage your boot loader.  
Either Mandrake or Debian.  You'll drive yourself nuts trying to keep up with 
two copies of lilo.conf on two different partitions.  Let one manage the boot 
loader, and tell the other one to ignore the boot loader whenever 

Next, I create a mountpoint for Mandrake and mount it:

mkdir /mandrake                    # to create a new mountpoint
mount -t auto /dev/hda1 /mandrake  # or add an entry to /etc/fstab

Verify that you see stuff in /mandrake/boot

Now, if you're using Debian to manage this, its default lilo.conf will 
probably set you up to install the boot block to a partition, rather than a 
device.  If you have something like

# Specifies the boot device
boot=/dev/hda3

You probably want to change it to:

# Specifies the boot device
boot=/dev/hda

(Why?  I'm not sure, really.  It has always worked for me the way I suggest, 
while I've had problems doing it the Debian way.)

Then you'll have something like:

root=/dev/hda3

Change it to:

#root=/dev/hda3

When you get down into this bit here (whatever yours says) stick a root= in 
here for this stanza:

# These images were automagically added. You may need to edit something.

image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.23-1-386
        label="DEB 2.4.23-0"
	root=/dev/hda3
        initrd=/boot/initrd.img-2.4.23-1-386
        read-only

Then you just add a Mandrake stanza like:

image=/mandrake/boot/vmlinuz
	label="Mandrake"
	root=/dev/hda1
	initrd=/mandrake/boot/initrd.img
	read-only

(That should probably work.  Mandrake sets up and maintains symlinks 
so /boot/vmlinuz->your-real-kernel and so forth.)

Then run /sbin/lilo -v to verify this worked.  Remember that I haven't done 
this in ages, so I may have gotten something wrong.  Please forgive me if I 
have.  The underlying principle is that you want to use the kernel from the 
Mandrake partion to install the entry for Mandrake.  If you just used /boot 
for both, you'd be booting Mandrake with a Debian kernel, which would break 
automount and perhaps other things.

If something went wrong, you can

cp -f /etc/lilo.conf.saveass /etc/lilo.conf
/sbin/lilo -v

to get back to where you started.

-- 
Michael McIntyre  ----   Silvan <dmmcintyr@users.sourceforge.net>
Linux fanatic, and certified Geek;  registered Linux user #243621
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/5407/



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