Lilo Multiboot

The Ennead · Posted: Sat Jan 17, 2004 12:49 pm Post subject: Lilo Multiboot

Why Lilo? I've always used it so I guess it's just force of habit rather than preference and i'm not sure a change to Grub would help the particular problem.
Current setup:

HDA1: XP (rarely used - purely for "just in case" and the impending Doom3 & HL2" etc

)
HDA5: VFAT Storage
HDA6: MDK9 / (rarely used)
HDA8: MDK9 Rest

HDB1: Gentoo /boot
HDB2: Swap
HDB3: Gentoo /

The problem I had was I needed to reinstall Gentoo but didn't want to overwrite the install as I wanted to recover some files. The option I went for at the time was to throw Mandrake on some spare space (1/2hr install), recover the files, wipe the drive and stick Gentoo back on hdb instead of its old hda.

All went well until it comes to booting when I run into the problem that XP won't boot with primary boot set to hdb. No problem, boot from Mandrake Lilo on hda and all systems boot fine.

The thing is I use Gentoo 99.9% of the time and i'd rather be booting from that, into that, rather than the messy system which is in place at the moment.

Is it therefore possible, to boot from hdb and set some kind of parameter up that can either be selected from the menu or would cut in after a default timeout, that would then pass the option to boot from the mbr on hda?

I currently just boot hdb and if the unthinkable happens that I should need to boot hda then its a quick trip to the bios to swop the order.

NightSpirit · Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2004 12:12 am Post subject:

Nothing wrong with lilo

It does seem like most people here prefer grub but I am an old slackware user and so used lilo exclusively for many years and am forced to run it on this little shuttle box as grub causes conflicts with the onboard gfx card.

Anyway, forgive me if I am mis-understanding your problem (and I admit to never having a root partition on anything other than the primary HD), but you have no problems with booting to hda and using the mandrake installed lilo to choose between MDK and Windows, right? So would it not solve your problem to copy your gentoo kernel image to the /boot on the mandrake partition and adding an entry to boot gentoo from the secondary HD? If you make it the first entry then it will boot to it as default. I'm sure there is a more elgant way to do it, but something like the following should work:

The Ennead · Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2004 1:23 am Post subject:

Thx for the reply m8

Yeah I can get away with it that way but the only downside is more of a "me being fussy" thing which is that I need to use the Mandrake installation to boot from and put up with their ugly bootsplash n stuff instead of the pretty Gentoo one. The latest idea I had is probably looking the best bet which is using the method you describe, but wiping Mandrake and putting a second Gentoo (GRP install though) installation in its place to use as a testing ground for new kernels and beta stuff, keep this one for my solid day to day install. It looks like i'll probably go with that when the next cd's come out and for the moment just do bios swops should I need to reboot.

NightSpirit · Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2004 8:19 pm Post subject:

Hey, no problem

If you wanted to change the boot splash on the mandrake-installed lilo, can't you just edit out the bits you don't like and exchange for the prettier gentoo options? providing you copied over the bootsplash image and stuff to the mandrake boot partition then lilo will still access them fine.

Tho, I'd go with your solution of wiping Mandrake and installing Gentoo there

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