From: -* FireHawk *- (firehawk@polaris.unm.edu)
Date: 02/26/93


From: firehawk@polaris.unm.edu (-* FireHawk *-)
Subject: Re: Lilo is a dog...at least to newbies
Date: 26 Feb 1993 15:53:22 GMT

In article <C30wn6.L07@acsu.buffalo.edu> v119matc@ubvmsb.cc.buffalo.edu (Claus Schwinge) writes:
:Not to say that the package is bad, but as a person who is new to anything
:on unix that is not end user, I have no idea where to begin...HELP
:
:The hard drive has three partitions MS-DOS (hda1), linux swap (hda2),
:Linux extfs(hda3).
:

This may be of help. I use the SLS distribution and also was having trouble
getting Lilo to boot Linux/DOS. The answer came in a posting to this group
a while back. Based on what that person did, I was able to get my setup to
work. Assuming that you have DOS and Linux already installed, the following
should work.
 
On my system, Drive 0 (or C: Drive) is set up similarly:
  
        /dev/hda1 <== DOS boot
        /dev/hda2 <== LINUX extfs
        /dev/hda3 <== LINUX swap

What I did was to make only ONE bootable partition on /dev/hda. In this case
I chose /dev/hda2 which is the Linux partition. In order to do this, you need
to use something like Linux's FDISK (edpart might work but I'm not sure). I
haven't had too much success using DOS's FDISK.

        1) Boot Linux from the boot disk that the SLS install program created
        for you.

        2) Login as "root".

        3) Type "fdisk" and then in fdisk type 'p' to get a listings of your
        partitions on /dev/hda. Beside the partition that is toggled as
        active, there should be a '*'. If its not the Linux parition, type 'a'
        and then the partition number to toggle active status off and on
        accordingly. Then type 'p' again to get a listing. Keep doing this
        until you see something like...

        1 /dev/hda1 DOS
        2 * /dev/hda2 Linux/Minix
        3 /dev/hda3 Linux swap

        in the listing that Linux's FDISK gives you. If all looks right, then
        type 'w' to write the new setting. Then quit Linux's FDISK and reboot.
        
      4) Repeat steps 1 and 2 to get back on to Linux. Type 'cd /' to make
         sure that you in the root directory of your Linux partition and then
         type something like the following:

         /etc/lilo/lilo -c -i /etc/lilo/boot.b -d 30 -v -v -v \
                msdos=/etc/lilo/chain.b+/dev/hda1@/dev/hda \
             linux=/Image,/dev/hda2

      By doing this, lilo will wait 3 seconds, specified from the '-d 30', for
      ctrl, alt, or tab keys to be pressed. If no keypress, then lilo will
      boot the msdos partition (/dev/hda1) by default. If a keypress, lilo will
      then prompt you for a partition to load. Type 'msdos' or 'linux' to load
      the partitions accordingly.

And that's how I got mine to work. You will want to subsitute '/dev/hda1',
'/dev/hda2', '-d 30', and '/Image' accordingly to fit what your have. I
deliberately tack the '/dev/hda2' onto the 'linux=/Image' argument to
tell the kernel where my Linux boot partition is. If you don't, you might
get a 'kernel panic: unable to mount root" message when it tries to boot. This
is because the default configuration in the SLS kernel is /dev/hda1 for Linux.
Oh by the way, for the experts out there: I know there is an easier way to
do this but it works for me at the moment. I just started using Linux not too
long ago myself. Anyway, hope this helps someone out there. =)

-Cheers =)

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INTERNET: firehawk@carina.unm.edu