Where's LILO?

[BrownieInMotion]

I finally bit the bullet and reformatted my hard drive, used fdisk to make a 25GB partition, reinstalled Windows XP in it in FAT32, and then installed Red Hat 7.3 on the remaining 15GB of my 40GB hard disk. I chose LILO as the boot loader and told it to park at the beginning of the /boot partition on hda3, and I chose DOS as the default OS.

When I rebooted after installation, the computer went straight into Windows XP. (It does this every time I reboot, even with my bootable RH CD in the drive.) Eventually I reinstalled RH, this time telling it to park in the MBR, and use Linux as the default OS. No change. It still goes to XP every time.

Why? What am I doing wrong? Do I need to pretend I have WinNT and do the NTLoader runaround posted in another thread? Gah.

[Penrich]

I dont dual boot, but if I did, i would listen to JohnT in this How I Did It thread (http://www.linuxnewbie.org/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=75693)

[slapNUT]

The first time : I chose LILO as the boot loader and told it to park at the beginning of the /boot partition on hda3, and I chose DOS as the default OS. you have to make the /boot partition active and make the Windows partition not, for that to work, because the bios is going to determine which partition to boot from.

The second time: this time telling it to park in the MBR, and use Linux as the default OS. No change. It still goes to XP every time. in this case something went wrong. If you put lilo on the mbr of hda then you should get the lilo boot prompt. I would suggest booting off a floppy or in rescue mode and running lilo again and make sure the last line says writing the boot sector.

[BrownieInMotion]

Originally posted by slapNUT
The first time : ... you have to make the /boot partition active and make the Windows partition not, for that to work, because the bios is going to determine which partition to boot from.
Okay, I tried this using fdisk in DOS... on attempting reboot I got "Error loading operating system" or some such.

The second time: ... in this case something went wrong. If you put lilo on the mbr of hda then you should get the lilo boot prompt. I would suggest booting off a floppy or in rescue mode and running lilo again and make sure the last line says writing the boot sector.
Tried this as well... booted from a floppy, tried to run lilo and got an error message about being past the 1024th cylinder (still kind of confused about that).

I went to try JohnT's method, and XP is all, boot.ini? We ain't got no boot.ini here. :rolleyes: I hate being clueless...

[slapNUT]

That's not an error about the 1024 cyl. just a warning. The important thing is did lilo say writing the bootsector? If it did then you should be dual booting otherwise you need to post your /etc/lilo.conf file.

[BrownieInMotion]

Originally posted by slapNUT
That's not an error about the 1024 cyl. just a warning. We are talking about trying to run lilo from a terminal window, not the lilo setup in installation, right? I remember the 1024 warning during installation. When I try to run lilo from a terminal window, I get the 1024 error message and nothing else happens.

The important thing is did lilo say writing the bootsector? If it did then you should be dual booting otherwise you need to post your /etc/lilo.conf file. I don't remember if it said this during installation. Here's my lilo.conf:

prompt
timeout=50
default=linux
boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
message=/boot/message
linear

image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.18-3
label=linux
initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.18-3.img
read-only
root=/dev/hda3
append="hdd=ide-scsi"

other=/dev/hda1
optional
label=DOS

Does this shed any light?

[slapNUT]

If your bios has the option to enable LBA then enable it. Change linear to lba32 save lilo.conf.
Run lilo and report any errors. If the last thing lilo says is writing the boot sector then you should be able to dual boot.

[BrownieInMotion]

Originally posted by slapNUT
If your bios has the option to enable LBA then enable it. Change linear to lba32 save lilo.conf.
Run lilo and report any errors. If the last thing lilo says is writing the boot sector then you should be able to dual boot.

Sorry for the delay in replying. What is LBA, and how do I find out if my bios has it?

[slapNUT]

Sorry for the delay in replying. What is LBA, and how do I find out if my bios has it?
I believe it stands for large block addressing or something like that. The main thing is that you change linear to lba32.

Another thing I just noticed is your Windows entry needs a table=/dev/hda line:

prompt
timeout=50
default=linux
boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
message=/boot/message
lba32

image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.18-3
label=linux
initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.18-3.img
read-only
root=/dev/hda3
append="hdd=ide-scsi"

other=/dev/hda1
table=/dev/hda
label=DOS

It doesn't need the optional option.