Hi The DOS+LOADLIN solution is in my opinion a very practical and safe one. I read "much safer than LILO" somewhere and some time ago, but I cannot recall why nor if it has changed with the last versions of LILO for which horror histories abound. Anybody knows?
There is however at least one situation that none of LILO or SYSLINUX can cope with: The Compaq boxes with a PCI SCSI and or Ethernet card on board. The problem is that Linux cannot address the PCI services on them (Ref: Linus Torvald). This is the case, at least, for the Compaq Deskpro and the high end XL series. There was a page on the WWW for Linux on these last. But...DOS+LOADLIN can cope with it: Compaq provides a DOS driver (luckily Novell Netware has the same problem as Linux :) called MOVEPCI which re-addresses PCI services and exits. Then one can load via MS-DOS LOADLIN. A CONFIG.SYS on top of MS-DOS 5.0 that worked for me is: ----- Cut here ---- DEVICE=\MOVEPCI.SYS SHEL=\LOADLIN \vmlinuz root=/dev/sda6 ro ----- Cut here ---- This and all the variants you can imagine like(take them alone or combined) LOADLIN from AUTOEXEC, within a menuitem (DOS 6.xx), many different kernels and/or root on different partitions, with the kernel image on HD or FD (yes, two moderatly large kernels + LOADLIN + MOVEPCI...fit in one FD!) and you can of course pass old the boot parameters you one in a line or (if too long for DOS) in a file. And if in a floppy is readable/transportable from/to any DOS machine around (the same good point of Syslinux used on Debian). I think LOADLIN is a good (and versatile) choice. I prefer it to LILO unless somebody can show me a good reason to not. P.S. Yes, I know that with Syslinux you can fit 3 kernels on one floppy + a tiny editor (I have DOS screen editor of size=4096 bytes!) ______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________ Subject: Re: LILO and W95 Author: debian-user@lists.debian.org at cclink Date: 02.08.96 07:26 On Thu, 1 Aug 1996, nathan work wrote: > ok, i just loaded linux after w95 for the first time. i know very > little about linux or unix for that matter and i'm having a real problem > - 95 will not 'recognize' LILO, and boots right into 95. i didn't have > this problem with 3.1. what i need is for someone to be gracious enough > to take me by the hand and show me how to overcome this (to keep w95 > from controling what's booted). please email me if you'd like: What I have done is similar to what Susan suggest in using LOADLIN, but I have setup a menuitem in config.sys to handle it. The line I use in the config.sys file is: shell=c:\loadlin.exe c:\vmlinuz root=/dev/hda6 ro This assumes my root file system is on hda6. This way when I boot I have the option presented to me. It is very much like LILO, but is all done through DOS/WIN95 utilities (when I started using linux, I was more comfortable doing it this way). ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Kenny Wickstrom | gnu - a new generation in s/w devel/support [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Linux - a much improved Un*x clone (847)740-4008 | Debian - a Linux distribution setting the #include <std-disclaimer> | standard for future distributions
