From: Conrad_Nobili@Harvard.EDU (Conrad C. Nobili) Subject: Re: [LILO]: Bootup choice between DOS/Linux... How-to? Date: 23 Oct 1992 20:40:47 GMT
In article <1992Oct23.103745.2383@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu>,
mpevans@nyx.cs.du.edu (Mark Evans) wrote:
> What I did was to create a floppy which would boot the linux
> image on the HD. Set the MSDOS partition as bootable. Then to boot linux
> insert the floppy and boot.
No, this is inferior. I too had trouble figuring it out for a while. You
can actually *choose* which OS to run at boot time if you do things
properly.
The basic problem is that the full documentation is in TeX form, and this
is often the sort of thing that one wants to figure out *way* before
fooling with TeX. With a little bravery though, one can figure it out from
the readmes.
There was a post here from Werner last week that inspired me to finally get
this figured out. I don't think my understanding is *complete*, but it was
sufficient to do what I needed. I think I can figure out how this *really*
works with just a bit more poking around. At any rate, in case it is
useful, here is my /etc/lilo/install file:
#!/bin/sh
/etc/lilo/lilo -b /dev/hda2 -c linux=/vmlinux \
windows=/etc/lilo/chain.b+/dev/hda1@/dev/hda
(The backslash is not really there -- I just put it to indicate that there
is not really a line break in my file....)
And here is my partition table, so you can see how the above relates to
reality and/or your system. Note that I only have one drive and that it is
/dev/hda (hey, c'mon, it's a notebook... ;-) ).
Disk /dev/hda: 16 heads, 17 sectors, 934 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 272 * 512 bytes
Device Boot Begin Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 1 1 302 41071+ 6 DOS 16-bit >=32M
/dev/hda2 * 303 303 905 82008 83 Linux extfs
/dev/hda3 906 906 921 2176 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda4 922 922 934 1768 81 Linux/MINIX
My BIOS seems to complain if I make more than one device bootable. I think
some other BIOSs may not have this problem. I think I could change things
a bit, but this works fine for now. You may have to experiment with the
-b, -c, -i, and -m switches a bit before understanding them. I know I did.
(And I still may not understand them completely.)
I can now hold down the shift, alt, or ctrl key when I boot up the machine
(after the keyboard is checked to avoid annoying messages) and I get a LILO
boot: prompt. Hit the tab key to see the options. Type one of the options
and that image should boot the system. My only complaint is that my
keyboard is QWERTY rather than Dvorak at this point -- I will have to see
if I can fix that.... ;-)
> It's not as complex as it looks
Well it is definitely either more or less complex than the way you're using
it.... ;-)
Conrad C. Nobili N1LPM Conrad_Nobili@Harvard.EDU Harvard University OIT