Hi folks!!

Recently, my Gentoo died (1 minute of silence please xD). I posted in may places for answers but didn't get away with a solution. So i decided to reinstalling it again. In fact i wouldn't mind installin t over and over again, the only problem is that i have on the same machine the motherf*cking WindozeXP......and i REALLY REALLY hate installing WinbugsXP.

I use LILO, and i always have this problem that if i have dual boot with LILO working fine and i make a new installation and /sbin/lilo to the MBR, i CANNOT boot anymore the Winbugs partition. Don't know why, i just now that always happens no matter wich distro i use.

And my question is.... if making THIS BELOW the *thing* will work...

1-format the / and /boot partition

2-I make the SAME Gentoo installation that was before BUT during the installation i make the SAME lilo.conf and DO NOT /sbin/lilo

3-Will Gentoo and WinbugsXP boot again???

PD: resuming,...repeat the same steps for installation but i omit installing LILO to the MBR and make the same lilo.conf that was before......All archives, kernel image, kernel map, bla bla bla in the same place the *old* LILO in the MBR had before...

any answer is really apreciated and thanked in advance!!!

if you dont want to install to the MBR, edit the lilo.conf file and change the line:

boot=/dev/hda ( or whatever your harddrive is)

to

boot=/dev/fd0 ( or whatever your floppy drive is)

if you want to make a lilo bootable floppy and leave the XP bootloader untouched.

hey __J, thanks a lot for that, i didn't know it, and maybe might use it in a future...

But i don't use the XP bootloader, i use LILO, i only want to re-install gentoo and leave the LILO *untouched* in the MBR, i only doubt if making the same lilo.conf again and leaving the LILO options as they are in the MBR right now, will make the new gentoo installation boot...

cheers ans thanks again!!!!!!!!!

yeah you should be alright, but you'll still have to run /sbin/lilo.

in my experience, I've always had to run it even if the kernel images are the exact same name and all.

__J, thanks for the answer again...
i have made a descision....,will take another 20gb hard drive and make a *test* installation of winbugs and gentoo, after that i will break gentoo and try to installing it again without /sbin/lilo and see what happens...

how did i forget to "simulate it"?? hehe... hammer me xD

thanks, will post the results soon!!!

When lilo is run, it points each kernel image to an exact portion of the disk... in other words, if the sectors used by the kernel have changed, you MUST re-run /sbin/lilo.