Kevin Grant <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Thanks for the help I've gotten on this so far. Unfortunately it doesn't > seem to be working. I seem to be caught in a catch-22 situation as far > as getting the system to behave as I want it to. Here's the situation: > > I have one dos/windows only hd. I have one linux only hd. I want to be > able to boot up linux and then use lilo to move to dos if I desire. The > earlier problem was that I had the linux hd as /dev/hda and the dos drive > as /dev/hdb and lilo couldn't get dos to boot off of /dev/hdb. Apparently > the dos hd has to be /dev/hda (drive C in dos terms) to boot. So I could > only get into dos by telling my bios to swap the boot sequence around and > boot off of drive "D" (apparently this caused the system to treat the dos > drive as if it were drive C).
The dos drive must be the first drive. > To solve this I swapped the hd's around and made the dos drive /dev/hda and > the linux drive /dev/hdb. However I still want to boot off of the linux > drive, so I set the bios boot sequence so that it would boot from drive D > (/dev/hdb). Unfortunately this seems to cause the bios to consider > drive C not to be the master drive anymore so that when I try to use lilo > to get into dos I get exactly the same error message as before, a sort of > "disk not available or non-system disk in drive" sort of message. > > The catch-22 seems to be: the only way to boot linux from a linux-only hd > as the default when the machine is turned on is to make the linux-only hd > /dev/hda, or to alter the bios boot sequence so that the system treats it > that way (no, I don't want to use a boot floopy to boot up linux either). > At the same time, in order for lilo to boot up a dos-only hd, the dos-only > hd has to be /dev/hda. Unfortunately both hd's cannot be /dev/hda at the > same time. So if my analysis is correct, and unless lilo has some way to > make the system change the hd that it considers the primary drive, there > is no way to accomplish what I wish to accomplish. > > The problem is that I am a linux newbie and can't tell if I'm making sense > here. Comments and possible solutions, if any exist, are requested. > > Oh, and my latest attempt has netted me a "cannot start virtual terminal" > sort of error message on the linux side, followed by a freeze, so that I > can't boot linux at all. This raises another interesting issue. Since > the lilo.config I'm experimenting with now contains lines like > "boot = /dev/hdb1", if I change the drives back the way they were (with the > linux drive as /dev/hda) presumably I won't be able to boot linux because > the lilo.config stuff will point to the wrong place. On the other hand, I > can't boot into linux now to change the lilo.config file. So how do you > get into linux to change a lilo.config file when you cannot get into > linux until after you've changed the file? :) I'm guessing I've got to > resort to the boot floppies at this point, right? Even if this is the case, > there should be a sort of general solution to this problem, to let you > experiment with the contents of lilo.config safely. I.E. to write a new > one that doesn't work, and then to be able to get into linux anyway, > without having to resort to a boot floppy, by some command that tells > lilo to boot up using a "safe" backup config file that you know works. > Is this option around and being new I'm just not aware of it? > > If you've actually read this far thanks for your attention, > -Kevin It seems that at this point, you have linux on /dev/hdb. Another file, that you probably did not consider is /etc/fstab, which is probably still telling the system to mount /dev/hda. Here is how I do it: /etc/lilo.conf x------------------------- boot=/dev/hda root=/dev/hdb1 install=/boot/boot.b map=/boot/map vga=normal delay=20 image=/vmlinuz label=Linux read-only image = /vmlinuz.old label = Linux.old read-only other = /dev/hda1 label = dos table = /dev/hda x-------------------------------------------------------------------- # /etc/fstab: static file system information. # # <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass> /dev/hdb1 / ext2 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1 /dev/hdb5 none swap sw 0 0 proc /proc proc defaults 0 0 /dev/hdb6 /usr ext2 defaults 0 2 /dev/hdb3 /var ext2 defaults 0 2 /dev/hdb4 /home ext2 defaults 0 2 /dev/hdc /cd/0 iso9660 ro,user 0 0 /dev/hdd /cd/1 iso9660 ro,user 0 0 /dev/fd0 /fd auto rw,user,noauto 0 0 /dev/hda1 /dos auto rw,user,noauto,umask=007,gid103 0 0 x-------------------------------------------------------------------- Yes, it looks like that you will have to boot with your emergency/ install disk at this time. Then modify your /etc/fstab. Then reboot with the emergency disk again with the root=/dev/hdb1 parameter. Then modify /etc/lilo.conf, run lilo, then try it all again. If all works right, you should be able to boot into either dos or linux. -- /*********************** Running Debian Linux *********************** * For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son, * * that whoever believes in Him should not perish... John 3:16 * * W. Paul Mills * Topeka, Kansas, U.S.A. * * EMAIL= [EMAIL PROTECTED] * WWW= http://Mills-USA.com/ * * Bill, I was there several years ago, why would I want to go back? * ************* pgp public key on keyservers everywhere? *************/
