I've finaly desided to take the plunge and install linux on my box. My question is about linux and the IBM Boot Manager. I would like to use BM to control which OS I boot into at startup; Wimpdoze98, OS/2 (both allready installed), or linux.I have seperate Primary Partitions for all 3 OS's; linux's empty, created ext2 with PartitionMagic. Does anyone have experience or knowledge in this area. Any help would be muchly appreciated. I don't want to mess up my system and have a bad first experience with linux. I'm a newbie to linux, please be understanding of my dumb questions. THANK YOU in advance for your help.I have the Mandrake 7.0 distro.

[Edited by Ed Fergin on 10-14-2000 at 05:07 AM]

I am not real familiar with the IBM boot manager, but you should be able to install lilo on the first sector of your linux boot partition and then add it to the IBM boot manager.

IBM Boot manager
 

If you are familiar with the IBM boot manager you may want to post technical information on it to get help. I am not familiar with it, but I have installed Linux with Windows 2000. I use the Windows 2000 manager to control the boot process (There is a howto that tells how to do it for NT and it works the same for Win2K). LILO is installed on the partition that Linux is installed on rather than the MBR. Then, in Linux, a copy of the installed LILO is made(from the boot record into a file) and made available to the windows boot manager. This may be the way you may want or need to do it (if possible) if you want the OS/2 boot manager to control the boot process rather than LILO. If you install LILO on your master boot record, it will be controlling your boot process rather than the OS/2 boot manager.

The problem is, I don't know if the OS/2 boot manager can use a mirror image of the boot sector of the partition Linux is installed on, in order to transfer control to LILO.

If you don't understand, please post and I will try to explain it more clearly.

I don't know Boot Manager inside and out but here is what I do know. BM occupies one primary partition which is the active one. On boot-up a screen comes up giving you a choice as to which OS you want to boot. OS's (like OS/2) which can boot from any type of partition or drive can be set up on any primary or logical partition on any drive, whereas OS's such as Wimpdoze which can only boot from a primary part. on the primary HD (aka logical drive C:) must be installed therein. Upon chosing the OS, BM passes control over to that OS's boot sector. BM, as stated above, requires its own primary part. but occupies only 1 cyl. Perhaps if I stated my HD setup it might help you (me?) more. As follows:

HD 1 14GB
OS/2 BM Prim. 7MB(1 cyl.)
OS/2 Boot Prim. 2.5GB Format HPFS
Free space 500MB
linux Prim. 3GB Format ext2 (NOT INSTALLED)
Wimpdoze Prim. 8GB Format Fat32

HD 2 2.5GB
OS/2 Maintanance Prim. 140MB Format HPFS
Wimpdoze apps Logical 2.1GB Fat32
linux Logical 259MB linux Swap

HD 3 815MB
Common Fat 16 Logical

note: OS/2 can read Fat16 + HPFS format only.All parts. created with PartitionMagic V5. Hope this helps: thanks so much for your time and help!

[Edited by Ed Fergin on 10-18-2000 at 04:10 AM]

It looks like, in your case the easiest way is to install LILO on the Linux ext2 partition (where you install Linux, probably hda3). Since the OS boot loader transfers control to the partition it is directed to, it should be able to transfer control to LILO.

I'm curious to know if it works, since I haven't known of anyone doing it but if it works as you describe, it should work with no problems. Also you should be able to configure LILO to let you select your other operating systems. It should even be possible for LILO to transfer control back from the LILO boot loader to the OS/2 boot loader again. I did this with Win2K. Not very practical, but interesting to know it can be done.

It sounds like from what i've been able to find out in this past week, your idea to install lilo in the ext2 linux partition sounds like the way to go. If I make it the active partition at install time everything should go well (I hope).After install, resetting BootManager active should make everything work the way I want it to. Then I'll have 3 OS's to blow-up. Any bets on which destructs first? Now I just have to learn what I can/need-to learn (any links/info anyone can provide would help) about lilo and then muster up the guts to go for it! Amasing what one can learn on the I-net in 6 days.

Thanks a Megabunch, will let you know how it works out, will probably go for it this weekend. If anyone can provide additional help/ideas, especially as to lilo, would like to hear from you. Thanks again and wish me luck, I'll probably need it ;)

These should help:

http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/mini/LILO.html
http://www.wwnet.net/~stevelim/booting.html

>Any bets on which destructs first?
I bet 200 points on Win98.

There are over 5 linux documents at:
http://ctdp.tripod.com/os/linux/index.html
There is a Linux User's Guide available there. Section 17 tells how to set up LILO and how the configuration file is structured.

Thanks everyone for the help, it worked just as I wanted it to by installing LILO in the boot partition. Windows might last a little bit longer than usual seeing I have a new pet (love that penguin) to cuddle up to ;) Must still admit W98 has the best printing, at least with my printers, maybe I'll turn it into a print server when I get a new machine.

Thanks again for the help, the links were invalueable!

Ed