On Tue, 18 Jun 2002, Mark Johnson wrote: > Hello all, > I recently installed Windows XP and reformatted to NTFS. I then > Installed my partition magic and bootmagic, and boot magic wouldn't > install to the ntfs partition. well, my problem is that boot magic said > to not use lilo in the mbr so I told lilo to boot from ext2 partition > and bootmagic booted lilo from the partition. now that I don't have > bootmagic I have to boot from floppy as Lilo doesn't come up. I read > through the man pages and the help from "lilo --help" and I can't figure > out how to get Lilo to boot from the MBR again? does anyone know which > option tells LILO to boot from the MBR instaed of the ext2 partition? > > Thanks > -=Mark=- To put lilo's first sector in the mbr of the first IDE HD,
boot=/dev/hda (the MBR is not in any partition, but is the first sector of the whole device.) FAIK this will make the NTFS unbootable. I know nothing about XP, but I think the NT bootloader can be installed into the partition boot record where lilo can chain-boot it if you scrabble through the options. I suspect it will try to use the MBR if you let it. Lawson ---oops---
lilo micro-howto version 0.0.6 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 29 February 2000 Use, distribute or change at your own risk. The definitive doco for lilo is the README file that comes with the lilo source. Usually there is also a copy in /usr/doc[s]/lilo*/README. It is long, boring, and very complete, really an excellent piece of technical writing. It and man bash are good reasons to be grateful less has a string search capability. If you don't have the README, I urge you to install the lilo source to get it. It really is fine doco. I can't think how to say it any better. To do anything at all fancy with lilo, what you must understand is that lilo.conf must describe the files you need to boot each image = and/or other = in terms of the devices and filesystem(s) _as they are at the time you run the lilo installer /sbin/lilo._ This includes the files named in image =, map =, initrd =, and install =, (you only need an initrd if you have to load a driver module to mount /, say if / is on a SCSI device and you use a modular kernel) and applies to making a good reliable lilo boot floppy as well: to make a lilo boot floppy you must [make a filesytem on the floppy] mount it, and copy your image, initrd, and /boot/boot.b files to files on the floppy that will be named in image =, initrd =, and install = parameters. You don't create the file named in map =, you just name the place where lilo will put its map file, so it can store a physical pointer to it in boot.b, likewise the boot sector itself must know where boot.b will be. Of course, you can make a lilo boot floppy by just copying a premade image to a floppy, but someone has to have done the work of installing lilo the right way, or it won't work. If you can understand that, you can do anything you like with lilo. As a side note, if lilo is installed into a partition boot record (boot = <partition device name>), another lilo installed in another partition or in the MBR can boot that linux partition as an other = OS instead of an image. You might find that an easier way to manage multiple linux partitions. PAY ATTENTION to the messages when running lilo. Any message other than Added <label> [*] is probably an abort message, and probably means lilo did not do anything. Look it up in the README. If it is a fatal error, you have to fix it and rerun lilo before you can expect a successful boot. Credit Richard Adams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> for reminding me: If you have both IDE and SCSI drives on your machine, lilo has no way to tell which the BIOS thinks is first, and will guess the IDE. If the BIOS is set so the SCSI drives are first, you must tell lilo: disk = /dev/sda bios = 0x80 disk = /dev/hda bios = 0x81 This is an example only. Please use your own good sense. Pretty please? Pretty please with maple syrup? I have had reports that BIOS's that let you boot from other than the first hd act as if whichever hd was booted is the first hd, and has to be addressed as 0x80. In that case, if you boot FI /dev/hdb with the BIOS to start lilo, you will have to tell lilo disk = /dev/hdb bios = 0x80 Generally, I think this is a bad idea, but you may have some reason to do it, so you may as well know about it.
