lilo questions.......

greetings and again tnx for the help---

It is called "Installing Woody (Debian Linux 3.0) and the url is:
wysiwyg://17/http:www.aboutdebian.com/install3.htm (that is what I see on the pages I printed.....)

I was describing booting from the floppy disk....

descriptions. For example, after noting at the beginning of this message that you'd previously made a "typo", you continue to misname "lilo.conf" "lilo.config" (unless Mandrake really does use a different name for this file ... I know Debian still calls it lilo.conf). When asking for configuration help, accurate reporting of the details is essential.

whoops! yes it is "lilo.conf" !

Ok, so I guess if I install Debian 3.0 or even Red Hat again, it will replace my existing bootloader but I will still have the option to make Mandrake the default. This is determined when I edit /etc/lilo.conf.

Is there a standard format for adding other linux distro's to /etc/lilo.conf? One of replies to my question explains it this way:

"It does not really make any differance which system installed lilo, the
secret is mounting all your disks/partitions where "lilo" can reach them all in one go, you can define any partition "in use or not" as long as it is mounted.

An example;
dos = hda1
redhat = hda5
mandrake = hdc1
slackware = hdd1

You boot with mandrake, you then create some extra dirs'

mkdir /hda5
mkdir /hdc1
mkdir /hdd1

mount -t ext2 /dev/hda5 /hda5
mount -t ext2 /dev/hdd1 /hdd1

Edit /etc/lilo and reflect the above

image = image-redhat
label = redhat
root = /hda5/boot/image-redhat
read-only

same idea for slack.

run lilo with -t to check that all is ok, when all is ok /sbin/lilo reboot

Another way is to copy all bootable images into one /boot dir and edit lilo.conf accordingly."

I have seen some say:
image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.2.0-ide pci<<<<<< is it /boot because all bootable images are in /boot?

      label=Debian (example)
      read-only
      root=/dev/hdd1

Anyway....again thanks for helping me with this..... Cheers-
Neil t.

Arachne/DRdos-Mandrake9.0/Basiclinux-QrpHamRadio
http://www.qsl.net/wa4chq
 


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At 02:03 PM 11/23/02 -0500, neil t wrote:
[...]

The concept of a "distro" is meaningless to lilo (either the Linux app or the bootloader itself). lilo knows about kernels, boot devices, root filesystems, and a few other things. In practice, a kernel selection is enough to distinguish a distribution, usually.

A basic lilo block includes these lines --

        image=/vmlinuz
        root=/dev/hda2
                label=Linux-2.2.18
                read-only

The image= line tells lilo where to find the kernel that will boot. The location is specified relative to the root filesystem that is running, and lilo will pass it to the bootloader as a physical location on a physical hard disk. Putting kernels in a /boot partition (which can be a separate filesystem) is a custom, nothing more, albeit a well-established custom. Newer versions of lilo can boot kernels from any device the BIOS can see, not just from the primary IDE (or corresponding SCSI) device. But in any given /etc/lilo.conf, ALL kernel images need to be referenced relative to the root filesystem that is currently running.

This is one of the reasons why the /boot directory, done as a separate filesystem, becaome customary. (The other was to deal with the 1024-cylinder problem, not only of historical interest.) If you made a smal partition on hda, then mounted it as /boot on EVERY distro, plus exercised a bit of care about kernel names, you could keep the kernels for all the distros you wanted to boot in the same place, simplifying updates.

The root= line tells lilo what the root (/) filesystem is for that distro. The usual practice in my experience is to name them following /dev directory entries; I am unfamiliar with the approach the other writer suggests.

The label= line tells lilo what to call in in the choices for booting (which appear in the "lilo gui" or on the command line if you press the appropriate key, I think SHIFT, before the lilo bootloader starts to boot).

The read-only line is a parameter that tells the kernel first to mount filesystems read-only. This allows for initial fsck of them. It is optional but a good idea.

Also somewhere in lilo.conf will be a boot= line, typically boot=/dev/hda . This line tells lilo where to install the bootloader.

In closing, please let me warn you to watch out for small errors of detail in what I've written here. I'm writing mostly from memory .. I don't have a multi-distro setup here to consult ... and my memory is not what it once was.

--
-------------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"--------
Ray Olszewski -- Han Solo
Palo Alto, California, USA [email protected]
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Are you looking for a better Debian Woody 3.0 regular install than the one you copied? Which one did you copy?

But you never mentioned running /sbin/lilo !!

...and run /sbin/lilo.

Debian/Red Hat/Mandrake are not boot loaders, per se. Perhaps those three distributions use the same boot loader. (?)

You do not need to do an 'install' to change|alter a boot loader.

The issue is not from which distribution a boot loader is re-written, it is what bootable partitions can be selected from the boot loader when the system is next booted. (?)

reach them all in one go, you can define any partition "in use or not" as long as it is mounted.

          ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

<snipped to end>
So,
if all the partitions you want to choose to boot from are mounted, run /sbin/lilo.

HTH, Chuck
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