Changing from GRUB to LILO

vamsikatakam · 11-23-2006, 03:47 AM

Hi friends,
I started reading about Linux,started from the scratch...(Boot loader).After understanding abt GRUB and LILO, I want to know few things :
1) If i am having a dual OS system, and i find both GRUB and LILO
conf files are available, how do i confirm which one is in MBR?
2) How to view the Master boot record ?

Don't blame me for my silly questions, Please help me..........

Andrew Benton · 11-23-2006, 04:11 AM

If I wasn't sure whether GRUB or LiLo was being used I would edit GRUB's menu.lst and change the name of one of the options, then reboot to see if the menu I was offered reflected the change I had made. For example, if one of the options was
title Fedora
change it to
title Fedoraora
It won't affect anything other than what GRUB displays at the GRUB screen when you reboot. If you edit LiLo's files it won't have any effect unless you run LiLo, so don't do that.

vamsikatakam · 11-23-2006, 04:47 AM

Dear Benton,
I have done that, and found that is GRUB only, not necessarily to do like that, even we can restart the system, and then while it asks for OS to be loaded, then we can see that it is GRUB(it gives options to edit,etc...)..
but my question, without doing that modification, can we find which is in MBR, or can we read what is there in MBR?????????

bathory · 11-23-2006, 05:02 AM

You can copy your MBR to a file like this:

Code:

dd if=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1 of=my-MBR

assuming that your boot disk is hda (else change it accordingly). Then you can use "strings" to see what is your bootloader:

Code:

strings my-MBR|grep GRUB

vamsikatakam · 11-23-2006, 05:29 AM

Thankyou Bathroy,
I am able to copy into a file my_MBR , but that was not readable..how can i understand from that ???

vamsikatakam · 11-23-2006, 05:35 AM

One more thing is after copying into my-MBR
I have given the command strings my-MBR | grep GRUB it gave GRUB,
and also executed the command strings my-MBR|grep LILO
it did not give any LILO,
so can we confirm from this that the MBR contains GRUB.

bathory · 11-23-2006, 06:28 AM

Quote:

I am able to copy into a file my_MBR , but that was not readable

Of course it's not readable. It's a binary file (actually an image of your boot sector), that's why you have to use strings to find the type of bootloader you use.

vamsikatakam · 11-23-2006, 11:13 PM

Thanks Bathroy, I was able to see GRUB as my MBR.

vamsikatakam · 11-23-2006, 11:23 PM

Hi please explain how can i change my MBR form GRUB to LILO. I am not having lilo.conf , so I copied lilo.conf from lilo.conf.anaconda and i also executed #lilo ..Even then GRUB is only there in my MBR , please assist me....

bathory · 11-24-2006, 02:05 AM

You should edit your lilo.conf to define your boot disk, so lilo will be written to the mbr and overwrite grub. If your boot disk is /dev/hda then use something like:

Code:

boot = /dev/hda

at the top of lilo.conf. Also running:

Code:

lilo -v

will produce more verbose output to help you understand what's happening.

Regards

reddazz · 11-24-2006, 06:37 AM

I've merged to related threads. I have also moved this to Linux Software since its not specifically a server question.

archtoad6 · 11-24-2006, 09:15 AM

Not that we normally question peoples' reasons for wanting to do a particular thing, but why do you want to change (in my mind backwards) from GRUB to LILO?

vamsikatakam · 11-26-2006, 11:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by archtoad6

why do you want to change (in my mind backwards) from GRUB to LILO?

As i said i am new to this Linux, I wnat to experience everything, so i wanted to test how it will be with LILO , so requesting you tell how to change from GRUB to LILO.

archtoad6 · 11-27-2006, 10:20 AM

Have you read the LILO man page yet?

What searches have you done:

Google?
LQ?
Other?