Baslinux mailing list

[baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org]

Hi Sindi,


--- baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org wrote:

> My first partition is never more than 500MB.

I'm trying to avoid messing with the existing
Windows partition, because there's a lot of
decent software installed there that i wouldn't
be able to replace.

> I wonder if you can boot with lilo by putting
> the kernel and boot.b (and chain.b?) onto a
> lilo boot floppy disk and editing
> lilo.conf to match.

Yes, i definitely want to try that ... it
can't hurt anything.

For some reason i have never seen a chain.b
file show up anywhere. I believe that LILO
may need that to load Windows ... but anyway,
first priority is to just get the computer to
boot from LILO in the first place.



> Change /dev/hda1 to /dev/fd0 in lilo.conf and it
> should write to the
> floppy disk instead of the hard drive.  But the
> kernel and boot.b may also 
> need to be on the floppy disk for this to work,
> which means editing 
> lilo.conf to have it look in /fd/boot/ rather than
> /hd/boot or /boot.
> I am curious if this will really work.


I'm going to try just writing LILO to the floppy
first, without the boot.b and kernel. If that
doesn't work, then i'll put those files on it too.


> 
> > Should i finally just install LILO into the MBR?
> >
> > How can i check the MBR to find out if i already
> > did install LILO there?
> 
> Have you tried reading a lilo HOWTO? 


Ha -- i've been the most serious LILO student
you could imagine, since i started messing with
BasicLinux on this Compaq.

But i still either find some of my questions
unanswered, or else i try what i see in the
examples and it still doesn't work.


Again i'll ask: is there a way to actually
read the MBR to see what's there? I did
download a hard-drive editor a few weeks ago,
but the output is all just hex code.


-monz