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Re: Recreating a second boot kernel in LILO



On 01/14/2017 05:38 PM, Stephen Powell wrote:
On Sat, Jan 14, 2017, at 10:05, Richard Owlett wrote:
On 1/14/2017 8:45 AM, Miroslav Skoric wrote:
Hello all,

Intro: I have been using LILO for ages. Now running Wheezy 7.11
LTS. As usual and for test purposes on older machines I have two
kernel flavours: 486 and 686-rt. In LILO boot menu they appear as
Linux486 and Linux686 (before renaming they were Linux and
LinuxOLD). Both work nice on two desktops of different age.

Anyway, few years ago I had a repetitive problem with the 686-rt
kernel slowing down the touch pad on a laptop, so I decided to
remove it completely. So in the LILO menu was left just one boot
option. Recently I decided to install 686-rt again, and during
the installation it added new config*, init.rd*, and vmlinuz*
into /boot, but it did not add any new init.rd* and vmlinuz*
links into /. And without that LILO still keeps one entry. Any
idea how to produce new links in / in order to recreate the
second boot entry? (In lilo.conf everything is the same as in
desktops, however /sbin/lilo complains about missing links in /)

M.S.

You may find Steve Powell's LILO Page useful -
http://www.stevesdebianstuff.org/lilo.htm
Also http://www.stevesdebianstuff.org/index.htm may be of interest.
HTH



The default installation of lilo assumes that the user is only interested
in booting the two most recently-installed kernels.  By Debian convention,
symbolic links are assigned to these kernels in / if "do_symlinks = yes"
is specified in /etc/kernel-img.conf.  The most recent kernel
is assigned the symbolic link name "vmlinuz", and the next-most-recent kernel
is assigned the symbolic link name "vmlinuz.old".  The same pattern is
followed with the initial RAM file system images that correspond to these
kernel images.  The most recent initial RAM file system image is given the
symbolic link name "initrd.img", and the next-most-recent initial RAM file
system image is given the symbolic link name "initrd.img.old".  If
"link_in_boot = yes" is present in /etc/kernel-img.conf, then these symbolic
links are maintained in /boot instead of in /.  However, these symbolic links
are maintained only for stock Debian kernels.  For custom kernels created
with make-kpkg or "make deb-pkg", "do_symlinks = yes" in /etc/kernel-img.conf
has no effect.  In my web page, referred to above by Richard Owlett, I provide
a reference to my kernel building web page where there are execs called
zy-symlinks which will provide equivalent function for custom kernels.

If there are special kernels that you want to be able to boot which are outside
the normal "last two", then you must manually edit /etc/lilo.conf to provide
the capability to boot this kernel, then run lilo.


Thank you all for your comments. Anyway, I think when I made the initial install several years ago (it was Squeeze 6.0.1a) it offered more than one kernel option for installation, so I probably chose two flavours to be installed, or something like that. So whenever a new kernel update appeared after that, it flawlessly updated both flavours (486 version & 686-rt version). So I always ended with two new kernels, and I could test/use them interchangeably. Yes I know that was not in accord with best LILO practices, but it worked for me. And I also realized the risk of neither update to be of 100% quality, but what is a chance that both kernel flavours might fail in the same update cycle?

Anyway, I have managed to recreate a second boot kernel in LILO, so things work nice for now.

M.S.


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