> In the past, I've always just booted Debian off of a floppy, but this time I
> want to use LILO to boot Debian or Win95 depending on what I want. If I
> want to use LILO, do I just choose 'Make bootable form hard disk' at the
> last step of Debian 2.1 Slink, or do I have to do something else.
You will have to modify your /etc/lilo.conf file and then run /sbin/lilo
in order to add the DOS choice to your LILO options. On my system I
have two IDE hard drives (/dev/hda and /dev/hdb) with Windows using all
of /dev/hda1, Linux on /dev/hdb1, swap on /dev/hdb2, and Windows on
/dev/hdb3). Here's what my /etc/lilo.conf looks like: (without the
comments)
boot=/dev/hda # Where I'm booting from.
compact
prompt # Let the user choose OS
timeout=60
default=dos # Use dos by default (for my wife :) )
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
image=/vmlinuz # Linux setup with root on /dev/hdb1
root=/dev/hdb1
label=lnx
read-only
other=/dev/hda1 # DOS setup with root on /dev/hda1
label=dos
> Is it possible to lose any information on my C: (windows) if I do install
> LILO on it?
Yes it is, so be very careful, especially with the first line. I once
put boot=/dev/hda1 instead of boot=/dev/hda. This put LILO over the
partition information on my DOS disk, which meant I couldn't access
the drive at all. boot=/dev/hda puts LILO in the master boot record,
where it should go.
Before you do anything (i.e. run /sbin/lilo) make a backup of your master
boot record on a floppy:
dd if=/dev/hda of=/mnt/floppy/mbr bs=512 count=1
This way if anything goes wrong you can boot Linux from your boot floppy,
mount the floppy on /mnt/floppy and restore the MBR:
dd if=/mnt/floppy/mbr of=/dev/hda bs-512 count=1
Also, read /usr/share/doc/lilo/Manual.txt It'll save your butt one day.
Chris
--
Christopher S. Swingley tel: 907-474-2689 fax: 474-2643
930 Koyukuk Drive, Suite 408C email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
University of Alaska Fairbanks www.frontier.iarc.uaf.edu:8080/
Fairbanks, AK 99775 ~cswingle
PGP key: http://www.frontier.iarc.uaf.edu:8080/~cswingle/pubkey.asc
