[plug] lilo and multiboot problems

[Dennis Plester]

Ari wrote:

"I'm trying to get lilo to let me boot either my red hat 7.0 (hda2),
mandrake 7.2 (hda6), or windows98se (hda1) operating systems from the
red hat lilo screen.  So far, I've been completely unsuccessful, and
from the errors reported with linuxconf when I try to apply the
changes to lilo I'm worried that some file has grown too large with
all my trials.  Here's what comes up after I press 'activate changes'
and I display the error log:"

<snip>

"    Checking lilo
      Executing /sbin/lilo  
        *Warning: device 0x0306 exceeds 1024 cylinder limit
        >Added RedHat
        >Added Win98SE*
        *Fatal: open /boot/vmlinuz-2.2.17-21mdk: No such file or
directory
        *return 1
  Executing some Sysv init scripts"

I suspect that if you are making this change to LILO in Red Hat, it won't
see vmlinuz-2.2.17-21mdk, because in Red Hat, the /boot directory will only
hold the Red Hat vmlinuz-2.2.16-22 image. Do you get my drift? Your system
effectively has two /boot directories in separate partitions, one for Red
Hat, and the other for Mandrake 7.2. If you are changing lilo.conf in Red
Hat, it will see a /boot directory containing vmlinuz-2.2.16-22. If you were
in Mandrake (and it was working correctly), the /boot directory would
contain vmlinuz-2.2.17-21mdk. How do you get around this? I don't know.
Either use the boot floppy that you made during the Mandrake installation
(grin), or when you are at the LILO prompt at boot time, enter "lilo
root=/dev/hda6" to force LILO to use the Mandrake partition and image.

I remember once before, Matt suggested I try loadlin, which will boot a
Linux kernel image from DOS/Windows. You could do this, placing both the Red
Hat and Mandrake kernels in a directory on your windows partition, and have
a simple menu at windows boot time allowing you to pick windows, Red Hat or
Mandrake. I didn't try this in the end, as I wanted to understand how LILO
works. I'll forward Matt's post to you off list, and you can check it out
for yourself.
 
I could be wrong, as I am still a Linux newbie. Hopefully some of the PLUG
veterans/legends (you guys know who you are) will chuck in their opinion as
well.

Hope this helps.

Dennis.