Hiya Heimo!
I'm not yet fully awake, so let me just give a quick summary of things
relating to MBR and installing Linux that I've encountered.
1. The only real "trick" is to document what partitions you designate for
each OS. A notebook and pencil are your best ally in doing installs. If you
*know* that (from the Linux perspective) /dev/hda1 is DOS, and you *know*
that /dev/hda2 is your boot partition for Linux, you can generally recover.
Remember: You TOLD the OS which to use at one point, so you can't blame
Linux (or DOS) if you didn't bother taking notes!
2. To recover your DOS partition:
A. If you have a DOS or Win9x partition that is unreachable, you can recover
it (and lose access to Linux) by just doing a DOS 'fdisk /mbr'. This will
lay down a DOS (MS?) MBR OVER the one written by Linux. Of course, now the
Linux partition is unreachable. This might be appropriate if you just need
to access some DOS/Win stuff quickly (which I've done). You can now boot
DOS/Win, and if you want to later recover Linux as well, that can be done
(more below).
B. If you're booting into Linux, you need to edit /etc/lilo.conf (assuming
you're using lilo). You just need to let lilo know where the DOS partition
lives. Something like this:
other=/dev/hda1
label="DOS"
Then run 'lilo' again to re-write the MBR and both Linux and DOS should
appear as options when you reboot.
It's worth emphasizing that -- as always -- there are many ways to do things
with Linux. You could use grub instead of lilo, or you could use loadlin.exe
from DOS/Win (not a bad recovery idea for a dual-boot system.) I use lilo
becase it's what I learned, but that's not to say it's 'better'. grub and
loadlin.exe both have the advantage of being easier to fix if you're NOT
booting into Linux direclty.
C. Recovering a Linux partition that's been stranded by an MBR re-write is
easiest if you prepare in advance. It's ALWAYS worth creating that recovery
boot disk that so many of us skip during installation. That will boot you to
Linux, at which point you're at B., above.
Failing that, the install CD often can be booted into a recovery mode.
Finally, there are some GREAT bootable recovery diskettes (tomsrtbt) or CDs
(LNX-BBC) that you can boot to get (hopefully) access to your Linux
partition. Typically, you'll do something like:
1.) Boot the recovery disk
2.) Change the "working root" to your old Linux partition:
chroot /dev/hda2
3.) At this point, you're at the same state as in B. above, and can edit
lilo.conf as before.
Is all this easy or transparent? No, not at all. Are the multitude of
options confusing? Yes. An OS that'll run on an old 386 all the way up to
high-end SMP systems is NOT about "freedom from choice". Is this the fault
of Linux? No. Mandrake is PARTICULARLY good about giving options for bootup,
and they're well known for great support websites and community. You need to
keep some basic notes about YOUR system though. As usual, the SECOND time is
lots easier.
Heimo, I agree though: There's still no good 3rd party book. But Mandrake
goes out of their way to keep things simple. Spend some time in their help
systems and online help.
Good luck with it!
- Bob
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