Re: reinstall lilo after windows
On Mon, Sep 12, 2005 at 06:31:00AM -0700, Alvin Oga wrote:
>
> > mkboot only works if you have lilo installed.
>
> those commands and gazillion other equivalent/similarly
> named commands all have assumptions in order to work
And boy, is it confusing if you don't know what the assumptions are!
>
> > So much study I found it easier to install and configure lilo even though
> > my system already booted with grub. My son is suspicious of grub. Last
> > year when he installed Debian using grub as bootloader, it hosed but
> > WinXP installation.
>
> whatever bootloader you use will ALWAYS wipe out the previously installed
> MBR if you write to the same location ... ( /dev/hda vs /dev/hda1 vs
> /dev/hda2, ... )
>
> if you want dual boot ...
> - you have to explicitly create the dual-boot config files
> ( lilo.conf or ( grub.conf aka menu.lst ) )
This was in the early days of the new sarge installer, when it
just gave you the option of using grub, and autodetected everything
without giving you a chance to check if it was correct. It didn't
detect Windows. My previous experience with Debian installation had
led me to believe that it would give me the list of OS's before
writing the MBR so I could confirm or cancel. I suppose it was really
the installer at fault here.
However, it did seem to me (not sure now after more than a year had
passed) that grub did end up writing more than just the MBR. It seems
to have damaged data Windows XP used at boot time that was not in the
MBR, and was not in the user-accessible (or even sysadmin-accessible)
part of the XP file system.
-- hendrik
>
> > He now uses lilo and boots Linux *only* from a floppy.
>
> sometimes paranoia is a good thing ... until one understands
> what the silly apps do when you tell it "go ahead and wipe out my disk"
>
> > By the way, does anyone know how to tell lilo that although the boot
> > and root partitions are all on /dev/hda, it should make a boot floppy
> > that boots from /dev/hdc instead,
>
> vi lilo.conf
> boot = /dev/fd0
>
> root = /dev/hda1
Won't that make it boot from /dev/hda1? How will it know to look on
/dev/hdc1 (where it will be after the hardware change?)
-- hendrik
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