multiple booting
 

Hi,

After go through many support pages i finally found something, which looks helpful. Now my problem is multiple booting.
I am running machine with linux mandrake 8.1, winXP and winME. My boot loader is the ever NOT so useful BOOTMAGIC. fare enuf its easy to use but theres no customisation what so ever. winXP and winME boot fine, however linux refuses to boot. The bootloader just says Preparing machine for linux....... And just hangs. I can boot into linux using a bootdisk but hey bootmagic should be able to handle this. HELP ME PLZZZZZZZZZZZZzz

nonLinuxGuru

I don't know what does your bm work, but I've got one question. Have you installed lilo on the beggining of Linux partition?

Yeah - try lilo or grub - they should pick up the partitions that your other OSs are installed on.

Mara,

I have installed linux on the beginning of the partition because it can boot off the floppy. Im pretty sure it aint linux but bootmagic might have some config files to change or something. What could be the problem though is that when i load my linux partition i have editted the linux.conf to append = nobiospnp. So maybe i have to change something in bootmagic for this. (Without this line not even the floppy will boot)

Thanx anyway.

Did you install lilo or grub into the boot sector of the root ' / ' partition? Did BootMagic find the linux root ' / ' partition? On BootMagic's configuration screen, click on ' ADD ' and then click on the ' Advanced ' check box to get a list of all the partitions on your system. Make sure that linux's root ' / ' partition is selected.

linuxcool,

thats exactly how i did it! However when i reboot and select linux from bootmagic it says "Preparing machine to load linux....." and just stops. Lilo is on the root partition not in the MBR.

thanx

Two or three years ago, I used to use BootMagic. I had to select the linux root partition manually because BootMagic didn't recognize it. When I did a reinstall of linux, BootMagic found it and named it ' Linux '. Before, it named it ' Other '.

The only thing I can think of to try, is to boot into linux and look at your /etc/lilo.conf file and make sure its ' boot= ' line points to your root partition. Like this:

boot=/dev/hdXY

Replace the ' XY ' with the correct partition info. Check to make sure the rest of the lilo.conf file is OK. Then as root run /sbin/lilo and try BootMagic again.

boot disk
 

You should be able to make a boot floppy. See my post on a similar thread:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...threadid=15326