Baslinux mailing list

[James Miller <jamtat AT mailsnare.net>]

On Wed, 8 Dec 2004 3aoo-cvfd AT dea.spamcon.org wrote:

> The lilo executable for BL2 is glibc2.  The lilo
> executable for BL1/BL3 is libc5.  However, it is
> possible to run the executable from BL2 and write
> the loader for a BL1/BL3 partition.  And vice versa.

Here's what I get out of this: if I had a computer with two adjacent
partitions--the second and third partitions--one having BL2 and the other
BL3, I could run the lilo executable from either and, using the -b switch,
cause it to write the boot loader to another partition.  Is that right?
In other words, let's say I'm booted into BL2 on hda2 and have pkg'd lilo
there: I can issue lilo -v -b /dev/hda3 and it will write the BL2 lilo
bootloader to the BL3 partition, right?  And vice versa.  I could be
booted into BL3 on /dev/hda3 where I've pkg'd lilo, and from there issue
lilo -v -b /dev/hda2 and it will write the bootloader to the BL2
partition.  And, theoretically, it shouldn't matter whether BL2 has BL3's
bootloader written to its partition, or vice versa: each can be booted by
the lilo that got written to its partition (using, say, SBM as we've been
discussing, to access those partitions).  Interesting.  But will I
remember it?

> There is no separate lilo package for BL3.  The lilo
> package for BL1 puts the loader at the start of the
> current root partition.  It looks for the kernel in
> the /root directory.

This is most interesting too.  I thought lilo's default behavior was to
write to the mbr.  From what you're saying though, BL1's lilo is set to
write to the partition's boot sectors, not the disk's (the mbr).  Is that
what you're saying?  It seems odd that it would work that way: even if
BL1's lilo were being run from a BL install on /dev/hda1, putting the lilo
boot code in the boot sectors of the partition wouldn't make the drive
bootable, would it?  I understand for a hard disk to boot, there
must be something in the mbr: lilo, grub, ntldr, SBM--or something.  So,
I'm still a bit confused about this.  Not that I'm any kind of expert.
Could well be that my understanding is just off somewhere.

James