On 7 Jan, john baird wrote:
> I have successfullyloaded Red Hat(it boots up ok)with a
> paartition for ms-dos,with the system files(format c:/s).When
> it boots up it asks me if I want to either Linux or dos.No
> problems.But when I install win 98 se it always boots
> windows,even if I haveLinux boot up disks in all drives.I
> believe I have to change the windows mbr to include the Linux
> option.How do I do this,could you please help me.
It sounds like you set things up for msdos, then installed Linux, then
Win 98?
I believe 98 rewrites the master boot record as part of the
installation.
Normally you'd install 98 then Linux, for that reason. It's no big
deal, though, Linux should still be there, just unreachable at boot
time.
You need to rewrite the MBR with something that can let you pick which
OS you want to boot (e.g. Lilo).
You need to somehow boot up some version of Linux. E.g. from a floppy,
or from your Red Hat installation CDs. (Don't start the full install
again, though! It has some rescue mode, from memory: you can boot it
up, and choose rescue, and then do Ctrl-Alt-F2 or -F3, ... to find a
plain super-user `#' prompt.)
Once you've done that, you can mount your installed Linux partition,
and rewrite the MBR with LILO, for example. You need to know the Linux
device name of the installed Linux partition (the "/" or root
partition).
You can use Linux /sbin/fdisk to print out the partition table, which
will give you the device name for the Linux root partition. E.g:
/sbin/fdisk /dev/hda
p
l
q
"p" prints the partition table. "l" lists the partition types: 83 is
Linux. You may already remember what partition you chose for the "/"
partition, in which case you don't need to use fdisk to find it out.
Anyway, let's say it's /dev/hda4.
So you'd:
# mount /dev/hda4 /mnt # Make your installed Linux visible.
# cd /mnt # Go to your installed Linux.
# chroot /mnt /bin/sh # Start using your installed Linux
# /sbin/lilo # Set the MBR to use your installed Linux
/sbin/lilo reads your /etc/lilo.conf file, which should look something
like this:
# Run /sbin/lilo after editing this.
#
prompt
timeout=1200
boot=/dev/hda
default=linux
image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.20
label=linux
read-only
root=/dev/hda4
other=/dev/hda1
optional
label=win98
If the /sbin/lilo command completes successfully, all you should then
need to do is reboot.
luke
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