Dual Booting

slackyoda · 06-01-2004, 10:34 AM

Can someone explain to me how to make LILO boot Slackware from /dev/hda1 and Fedora from /dev/hda4.

Thanks in advance.

P.S. I am an idiot and I can't RTFM

Andrew Benton · 06-01-2004, 10:49 AM

I don't think it's possible to get lilo to boot two different Linux distro's. Grub can do it. Fedora uses Grub. An entry like this in Fedora's /boot/grub/menu.lst will allow you to boot both Slack and Fedora

Code:

title Slack
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda1 vga=788

sandy_obrien · 06-01-2004, 12:27 PM

and it's called LInux LOader... sounds strange to me that it wouldn't boot more than two linux os's

crazyeddie740 · 06-01-2004, 02:28 PM

to point out the obvious:

GRUB is newer than LILO. I personally use LILO, haven't used GRUB yet, but, being newer, it has more features. Since it looks like a lot of distros are moving towards grub, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for new features to be added to lilo.

slackyoda · 06-02-2004, 07:18 AM

Thanks for the help. Everything works perfect now.

I personally prefer LILO because it's simpler, faster but it really surprises me that it can't accomplish such a straightforward task....

crazyeddie740 · 06-02-2004, 01:48 PM

first time I've come across it myself. No wonder everybodies moving to grub

r_jensen11 · 06-02-2004, 03:03 PM

Not sure, so don't quote me on this or hold me responsible if your system doesn't boot, but wouldn't you do something like this for the bottom section:

Code:

image = /boot/vmlinuz
  root = /dev/hda1
  label = Slackware
  read-only
image = /boot/vmlinuz
  root = /dev/hda4
  label = FC
  read-only # Non-UMSDOS filesystems should be mounted read-only for checking

slackyoda · 06-03-2004, 07:32 AM

I thought too that this would to the trick but what it actually does is boot Fedora with the kernel from Slackware.

crazyeddie740 · 06-03-2004, 04:23 PM

Okay, I was just going to hop in and point out that I was wrong about LILO not booting more than one distro (I don't think i actually said that, but I'll take the blame). But it looks like you already discussed that. Don't have a clue what to do with this case though.