> All this makes sense, of course. What I don't understand is > how something got written to the MBR and why my floppy drive > is ignored now. To clear my SCSI drives 1 and 3, I'll have to > do a low-level format.
>From an earlier message, I gathered that you DID tell the installation program to install lilo at least during one installation attempt. If you did that then lilo installed the lilo boot loader code in the MBR. When lilo does this, it creates some files in /boot/ directory including a copy of the original boot block. Lilo csn then later be told to 'remove itself' and replace the original boot code. However, in your case, you re-attempted initial installation which 'wipes out' the files saved by lilo. Thus, there is no longer any way for lilo to restore the original boot code since it really does not exist. So even if the installation code authors examined the drive to look for a previous installation of lilo, there is no way that they could 'uninstall' it anyway. In addition, many people have multiple installation of Linux on the same machine (I usually have two or three myself). It would be a _real_ disaster for me if lilo removed the lilo boot code when I did a second or third linux installation. I am at a complete loss as to what linux could possibly have done to make your floppy be ignored. As far as I know, recognizing and booting from your floppy is an activity that takes place long before ANY linux code is loaded and executed (you do have the CMOS set for A: then C: and not the otherway around, yes?) Actual low-level formatting of scsi drives is a pretty unusual activity. Drives vary between just plain ignoring the command, immediately returning an operation complete response, running a bad block scan, to actually DOING a low level format. Many scsi drives actually can not be low level formated without special (manufacture specific) software. As I think I mentioned to Jean Pierre, my knowledge of DOS could be stuffed into a thimble. At any rate, DOS is gone, and /dev/fd0 is useless. (I just knew there was something I liked about you!) Last night I catenated /target/etc/lilo.conf to stdout and saw something like what you've got below. But it didn't do much good because I'm not familiar with the file. Also, didn't find anything in the boot that came with v1.3. Can you tell me what to edit to what to get rid of lilo from the master boot rec? Short of the DOS FDISK/mbr I don't know of anything (simple) that you can do to get rid of lilo at this point. You can edit /etc/lilo.conf so that it looks something like this: boot = /dev/sda prompt timeout = 50 compact delay = 20 install = /boot/boot.b map = /boot/map vga = normal image = /vmlinuz root = /dev/sda3 label = Linux read-only other=/dev/sda1 table = /dev/sda label = DOS Substitute your drive designation for 'boot = /dev/sda' (but I think that is correct for your system. Substitute your drive/partition designation for 'root = /dev/sda3' of your (attempted) linux installation. Substitute your drive/partition disignation for 'other=dev/sda1' for the location of your DOS partition (if you have one). I think but am not positive that the 'table = /dev/sda' has to point to the drive that contains the linux root filesystem (regardless of where the dos partition is located). After editing that file (/etc/lilo.conf) then run lilo itself: lilo -t -r /target The '-t' tells lilo to just tell you what it wants to do but not to change anything. A '-v' tells lilo to be somewhat verbose. The '-r /target' tells lilo to the directory '/target' as the 'root' for its' operations (otherwise lilo would want to modify the ram filesystem which would be a bit useless). This should give you an output like: [EMAIL PROTECTED]:/home/wrl# lilo -q -t Linux * DOS If you use the '-v' option then it might look something like this: [EMAIL PROTECTED]:/home/wrl# lilo -v -q LILO version 20, Copyright 1992-1997 Werner Almesberger Reading boot sector from /dev/hda Global settings: Delay before booting: 2.0 seconds Command-line timeout: 5.0 seconds Always enter boot prompt Serial line access is disabled No message for boot prompt No default boot command line Images: Linux * No password Boot command-line won't be locked No single-key activation VGA mode: 9 (0x0009) Kernel is loaded "high", at 0x00100000 No initial RAM disk No fallback Options: "ro root=304" DOS No password Boot command-line won't be locked No single-key activation No fallback (Your lilo version is probably different than mine so the message may well not be an exact match. If what you get does look pretty much like the above (and in particular lilo does not report any errors) then type: lilo -r /target Lilo should then correctly install itself but remember the boot.b file is NOT valid since it is just a copy of what you have right now (I don't recall that lilo attempts to do any verification of the existing boot block--really don't see any way that it can since one's present boot block might not be a DOS boot block to start with). -- best, -bill [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] from a 1996 Micro$loth ad campaign: "The less you know about computers the more you want Micro$oft!" See! They do get some things right! -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .