So, I already had slackware installed on one parition (/dev/hdb2) of my hard drive and windows on the other (/dev/hdb1) and I had set up lilo to dual boot nicely. Now, I've installed gentoo on the partition that used to contain windows, and I'm not sure what I should put in the gentoo section of /etc/lilo.conf (residing on my slack partition).
Help much appreciated!
L.

hi there,

first info: where is lilo installed? i suppose that you are running lilo from slack, so what you need to do is the following:
1. mount your gentoo system somewhere : mount /dev/hdb1 /gentoo - add the partition info to fstab in your slackware system.
2. find where is gentoo kernel: 99% /boot
3. add that to lilo.conf from SLACKWARE in your gentoo section:
you need to fill with the correct nameof your kernel file....

regards

slackie1000

Ahhh, I see, I didn't mount it.
I'll try that, thanks a lot!
L.

hi there,

you don't need to mount. the important part is adding the correct entry to your fstab file.
mountinng is just a way of checking if slack can "see" your gentoo partition.

cheers

slackie1000

Sorry, but I want to know: Don't you need to mount? Will lilo be happy if it cannot "see" the gentoo kernel when run?

When it comes to dual booting, I personally prefer Grub, living on a shared /boot partition. Makes life easier

hi there,

you don't mount manually, i mean. you add to fstab and make it mount at boot time.
only then you will be able to run direct from lilo the gentoo kernel.

regards

slackie1000

Actually Slackie that's backwards. Lilo just needs to be able to see all the kernels you'd like to be able to boot when you run lilo. I assume what people were saying before, tho I've never tried it, is that if you refence a partition lilo can't see when it's run, it'll try to mount it itself, which is why it needs to be in fstab. I've mounted partitions by hand without any trouble in the past, except that it makes your lilo.conf a little confusing to read at times.

With respect to grub, it does have some nice features, but it left me severely stranded when I deleted the partition with grub.conf on it. Lilo would still have let me boot all the other partitions. And it is possible to make lilo look just as pretty as grub.

How come? You should still have been able to boot from Grub's command line. .

But it's more the fact that grub lives on /boot that makes me like it for a multi-boot - it means I can change it no matter what distro I happen to ahve booted into.