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Someone gave us a 300MHz Gateway server (huge) with Slackware 11 on it and 
also an 800Mhz Soyo motherboard with three bad caps that we replaced, with
onboard video Trident 3D Blade that works perfectly with Xvesa and svgalib 
(unlike i810 and Savage onboard videos, which I gave up on).  So I am 
trying to clone the Slackware disk to use in the SOYO to test if hardware 
is usable with linux before I compile drivers for BL.  Maybe SW11 even 
works with i810 and has the source code for it.  Maybe I could figure out 
how to use Slackware 11 to compile for an earlier glibc.

Slackware is set up with ext3 file system and boots with lilo.  hda1 is 
128MB swap and hda2 is linux.  The SOYO came with 512MB PC133 so I don't 
need swap.  It is 1.5GB, probably a 'minimal' installation.  No kernel 
source code.  Kernel is 2.4.33.  Boots to a console.  Has no mplayer, 
abiword, opera, eznet, zgv....  Does have mozilla and lots of gui stuff.

I set up the original drive as hda and the target for cloning to as hdc.
Booted with David Moberg's 1-floppy USB linux (BL3 first disk Ctrl-C would 
have worked too).  BL does not make ext3 so I used Slackware to format the 
new drive.

mount /dev/hda2 /hd
chroot /hd /bin/bash -login
fdisk /dev/hdc1 
mkfs -t ext3 /dev/hdc1  (wait a bit)

I then mounted /dev/hdc1 /mnt
Got some error message about mounting ext3 as ext2.

cp -a /hd/* /mnt

I now have all the files.  I can chroot to the new Slackware disk and run 
programs in it.

I turned off the computer, removed the original drive, and moved the new 
drive to hda and rebooted with the BL disk.

I mounted /dev/hda1 and edited /etc/lilo.conf to change root=/dev/hda2 to 
/dev/hda1.  There is nothing else significant in lilo.conf except a choice 
of framebuffer video modes.  Default is 'normal' (no framebuffer).

I then chrooted to /dev/hda1 again and typed man lilo and read about
how to install it.  This is where I went wrong.  I have only installed 
lilo to floppy disks (for computers where Xvesa won't work after loadlin 
no matter whether you have a config.sys or a mouse driver loaded).
I used boot=/dev/fd0.  Slackware had boot=/dev/hda instead.
I forget exactly how I installed lilo to fd.

I tried to install it to hard disk:

lilo -M /dev/hda
I tried also  lilo -M /dev/hda mbr
(ext instead of mbr looks for extended partitions)
It seemed to be working both times.

What should this be instead?

When I tried to boot, 'no boot signature in ... partition'  (can't read my 
scribbles).

Assuming I had put Slackware in /dev/hda2 again, I could copy over the 
original lilo with dd if=/boot/boot.0300 of=/dev/hda bs=446 count=1,
says Running Linux (or back it up from a backup copy, anyway).
Running Linux explains how to make lilo.conf but I can't find instructions 
for installing lilo, just to configure or remove it.

Ubuntu made its own partition bootable - does that mean lilo is in the mbr 
of that partition?  Since it got installed to hdb, and hda is bootable, 
Ubuntu only boots if we set BIOS to boot HDD-1 instead of HDD-2, otherwise 
it boots to DOS.  Ubuntu live CD was unable to set up X for my Nvidia Riva 
PCI card which is in a dual-head computer with an MGA card.