LILO Issue: How to Boot 2 Distros
 

I have two hard drives in my system currently. One was a Windows drive, and the other Mandriva. Mandriva has been so great that I decided I do not need Windows any more and subsequently formatted my other drive. I then installed Slackware 10.2 on it, since I had a spare Slack disk here and have never used that distro.

I already have LILO installed on my MBR from my Mandriva install, and do not know if I should have installed LILO again when the Slackware install asked me to. I decided to skip installing LILO on my Slackware install and now when I reboot my PC, obviously Slackware is not an option to boot from, although Windows used to be on the menu by default. I went into my Mandriva menu and went to the Boot options section and tried to add Slackware to LILO, but it wants me to add a "kernel image", and the kernel image for Slackware is not an option (I don't know where to even find the kernel image).

Basically, I just need to know how to make Slackware an option to boot from when LILO loads. I have a Slack install I cannot access. Since I have yet to use this install, I have no problem reinstalling it from scratch if that's what I need to do. Thanks in advance

hi!
Even I had a similar problem with mandriva and suse 10

There is a file "menu.lst", in /boot/grub directory which lists the menu options along with the partitions need to be accessed and the kernel image, initial ram disk

so you need to add these onto the file!

Ex:
Slackware
root(hd0,5) --'the root partition of slackware'
chainloader +1

or
Hope it works ! (didnt work for me)

mount the slackware partition in Mandriva ->mount /dev/hdc5 /mnt/slack
and copy the kernel image something like vwlinuz #### and intird image initrd##### onto /boot directory

and add this to menu.lst
Slackware
(hd0,5)/boot
kernel vmlinuz#####
intird intird#####

this link might help

i did a quick search on google and this link might help

Congrats on ridding yourself of the "Curse of Redmond!"

I don't have two drives, so I don't have any knowledge of multi-disk LILO. But adding a kernel image is no problem and you definitely don't have to reinstall Slackware if it got laid down correctly.

Lilo wants to be able to see all the kernels and initrds (when necessary, which is not normally so with Slackware) so all you have to do is mount all the paths to the kernels before you do the lilo config. I have another post on the topic at:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=420172

If you have any questions lemme know.

Thanks, Randux and all the others.

A couple of other questions for you, Randux, since you seem to be the Slackware guru on this thread. I have been booting Slackware from the boot floppy I made at install (I haven't read your post yet and will do so when I am done here), and whenever Slack boots, I notice that it boots directly into root and into the command line and not into KDE. My questions are: A) how do I stop making it boot into root and B) how do I make it boot by default into KDE? Also I notice that Slack has named my pc "Darkstar," is this the default name it gives on all installs?

Thanks.

LOL man I'm no guru, that's for sure. I've gotten tons of great advice from the real Slackware gurus- the user community has been awesome and if I can give a little back then right on.

I'm just a guy who has done a lot of booting with lilo in the past month, and I'm likin' it. I'm booting *doze and 3 linux machines. I can add a new distro in under a minute, I have a cool bootgraphic, and lilo just plain works. Ok, now to your questions:

1) I am guessing you mean that it boots to command line, and not root per se. This is normal behavior. If it truly boots into root the only thing I can think of is to set a passwd right away with the passwd command. An unprotected root is a kick-me sign on your forehead.

2) As to logging in to a graphical environment, the wisdom I learned from the guys here is- don't. At least not with root. Let's suppose you fry something in your X- or KDE environment, and now you can't log in to fix it. What are you going to do now? root should ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS log in to a command line. Now if you want to have your user logons pop into a graphical environment, that's easy to do. Again, I checked on here and the guys suggested making a .bash_profile to invoke the graphical environment. Slackware executes the .bash_profile every time you log in. What I did was to create a global profile and symlink it from each userid. We can go more into detail on this when you have your other issues resolved.

3) darkstar- yes, it's a common name in the linux world, I don't even know if Slackware is the only (or first) distro to use it. Some of the other guys surely know.

Slackware by default boots into the command line (runlevel 3). To get a graphical login, you need to edit /etc/inittab and change the default runlevel from 3 to 4 (i.e. change id:3:initdefault: to id:4:initdefault:).

Darkstar is the default hostname given to Slack machines if you did not set your own. You can change this in /etc/hosts.