run lilo -v on the drive and see what it says, you will get some messages about what it is doing.
or try grub? On Wed, 05 May 2004 21:58:46 +1200 steve <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi there, > > Can anyone help me? I'm trying to play with a copy of WhiteBox Linux, > which claims to be a RedHat ES 3.0 clone... mainly because that _should_ > mean that Oracle is supported. To test this, I'veinstalled it on a spare > 2.5 inch disk that I had, and I'm now trying to boot off this on my > current Linux box, but mounting it as an external USB disk, with the > original hdd in place, 'cos it's got all my source code on it. > > This is what I've done so far: > > 1. installed ( had to stuff it in my laptop to get it to recognise the > disk - external usb for install - no chance. > 2. modified all fstab entries to point to sda, not hda. > 3. Created a new initrd.img that contains all the relevant scsi and usb > drivers, plus a few that I'm sure aren't > 4. mountde new root and usr partitions and chrooted to them, and... > a. installed the latest version of lilo, and used the following lilo.conf... > prompt > timeout=50 > default=linux > disk=/dev/sda > bios=0x80 > disk=/dev/hda > bios=0x81 > boot=/dev/sda > root=/dev/sda1 > map=/boot/map > install=/boot/boot.b > message=/boot/message > lba32 > > image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.21-4.EL > label=linux > initrd=/boot/usbinitrd.img > read-only > append="root=LABEL=root" > b. run lilo, with no errors or warnings. > 6. rebooted. > I get to LI with the root=/dev/sda1 entry in, L without. > > Any suggestions anyone? This started out as me trying to be clever, but > I'm now really wanting to get to the bottom of how these bootloaders work. > > As ( if it ever works ) it will be a nifty bit of cheating, I'll post a > mini how-to _when_ I win (: It'll be good for solid state disks as well, > so could actually be of some use... Knoppix on a stick anyone??? > > Cheers, > > > Steve -- Nick Rout <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
