LinuxQuestions.org - Grub and lilo, are they brothers?

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Grub and lilo, are they brothers?

Lilo is the older brother, but still going strong. The Mandriva 2006 installation program presents it as a fist choice. But grub were on the list also. Is lilo better than grub?
Please, not the usual answer like "It depends on what you want".

What is the difference between grub and lilo :confused:

Asks fossiili,
living on the latitude 65N, longitude 25E.

Sorry, if my English sounds strange, its since 55 years I learned it in the school.

To the newbie user like me, the difference is that after you edit your lilo.conf file, you have to run /sbin/lilo. For grub, you can just edit the grub.conf and it will take effect the next time grub runs.

I'm sure I'm missing most of the important details...

This should provide some insight: http://lwn.net/Articles/89772/

Quote:

Originally Posted by pljvaldez

the difference is that after you edit your lilo.conf file, you have to run /sbin/lilo. For grub, you can just edit the grub.conf and it will take effect the next time grub runs.
I'm sure I'm missing most of the important details...

Thank you, that was just the most important detail I have to know!

It is also like GRUB has more number of options compared to Lilo.

I rather like Grub because, when :rolleyes: things go :eek: "oopsie!" :eek: Grub gives you a lot of on-the-spot commands which enable you to see what has gone wrong and to perhaps do something about it. (info grub is well worth the reading, and there's a lot of stuff there!)

In situations where LILO would force me to be grabbing for a rescue-CD, Grub lets me work-around the problem well enough to get the machine started.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sundialsvcs

In situations where LILO would force me to be grabbing for a rescue-CD,

Thank you for all of the answers. I read the information in the links and thought I have learned enough.
My original problem is, that after installing Mandrake to my computer were I have SuSe 10.0 running well and also WindowsXP, I lost SuSe. Suse uses GRUB and Mandrake LiLo.
I deceidid to edit Mandrakes lilo.conf
The critical lines in SuSes menu.lst are

Code:

title SUSE LINUX 10.0

    root (hd1,1)

    kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hdb2 vga=0x31a selinux=0    resume=/dev/hdb1  splash=silent showopts

    initrd /boot/initrd

Thus I added to the Mandrakes lilo.conf the lines

Code:

image=/boot/vmlinuz

        label="SuSe10.0"

        root=/dev/hdb2

        initrd=/boot/initrd.img

        vga=788

I did that using Kwrite but checked cat'ing in the terminal that everything looked nice in my eyes. Then I started to run /sbin/lilo -v -v.
And then restarted the computer. From the menu I get Windows and Mandrake upp, but while starting SuSe10.0 a lot of text was running on the panel, if I understood right, something was lacking ...

Can anybody guess, what went wrong :scratch:

Quote:

Originally Posted by fossiili

while starting SuSe10.0 a lot of text was running on the panel,

The end of the long list:

Code:

Initrd finished

Freeing unused kernelmemory: freed

Kernel panic - not syncing: No init found. Try passing init=option to kernel

I have tryed that bouth as
initrd=/boot/initrd.img and
initrd=/boot/initrd.

:confused:

Use your Mandrake install to go to the Suse install boot directory. See what initrd is named.

Quote:

Originally Posted by pljvaldez

Use your Mandrake install to go to the Suse install boot directory. See what initrd is named.

I mounted hdb2-partition and here is ls from /boot

Code:

backup_mbr

boot@

boot_ls.txt

config-2.6.13-15.7-default

grub/

initrd@

initrd-2.6.13-15.7-default

message

symvers-2.6.13-15.7-i386-default.gz

System.map-2.6.13-15.7-default

vmlinux-2.6.13-15.7-default.gz

vmlinuz@

vmlinuz-2.6.13-15.7-default

And now I have tryed
initrd=/boot/initrd.img and
initrd=/boot/initrd and
initrd=/boot/initrd@

Always the results are the same - Kernel Panic:Pengy:

After all, I beliewe, I move to GRUB:study: