Hello?

For PowerPack 10.1, if I choose the LILO boot loader
to reside on the first sector of the boot partition (hda5)
instead of on the MBR, the first reboot hangs on the splash
screen.

If, then, I reboot in the rescue mode and "chroot /mnt" and
reset the "boot" to be on the MBR (hda) in the "/mnt/etc/lilo.conf
and run "/mnt/sbin/lilo", LILO is, as expected, written to the MBR
as I can see PowerPack's boot loader instead of other distro's I
used to have previously, but this also hangs on the splash screen.

I'm currently reinstalling the PowerPack, but is this a known issue?

Thanks.

You would select hda5 if you had another boot loader already installed, such as a another linux installation, or if you are dual booting windows XP and linux and want to use the NTLDR to chainload the linux loader. Otherwise you should use the MBR of the active disk.

If you have another linux installation already installed, you could edit that distro's lilo.conf to boot up your new installation, or have a chainloading entry in lilo.conf pointing to hda5. If you have XP installed, you could google for one of the many howto's detailing how to copy the bootstrap portion of /hda5 to a file and edit the C:\BOOT.INI file. There may be dozens of treads on this subject in this web site also.

Hi jschiwal,

Thanks for your tips.

I just finished up reinstalling PowerPack 10.1 and
this time it works great.

Here's what I've done:

1. Installed the LILO to the MBR.
2. Booted in rescue mode of another Linux distro
and replaced the LILO with that distro's boot loader.
3. Modified other boot loader's config file to boot up
the PowerPack.
4. Can triple boot now: WinXP, PowerPack, SuSE.

But, still, it is a puzzle why I can't boot to PowerPack
if I install PowerPack's LILO boot loader on the first
sector of the root partition from SuSE's GRUB boot loader.

As I said, my boot is always hung at the PowerPack's
splash screen.

Isn't the gist of the matter here is that if I have other
distro's (A) boot loader residing at MBR that can take care
of booting yet another distro (B), I can place B's boot loader
anywhere as long as A's boot loader can load up B's kernel
image?

Anyway, I'm set for now for experimenting more with my
new Mandrake, and thanks.

Great!

the answer to your Q is CHAINLOADING

Grub can chainload any working bootloader like this

bios to preferred drive's MBR > grub bootloader
> grub's booting files includes /boot/grub/menu.lst that must contain an entry similar to this

title CHAINLOAD that other horrible bootloader
root (hdx,y) (read my tut if you don't know grub speak)
makeactive (for MS types)
chainloader +1

(2) so when you select that title grub will jump to the first sector of the target partition and hopefully find your other bootloader.
It does not care if that bootloader does not know anything about a linux kernel. The initial booting files just need to be accessable which must be the case if you saw the menu screen

Hi aus9,

Great! Thanks. I guess I should've paid careful attention
to the line for Window's booting in the menu.lst for better
understanding of my case.

Regards,

There are three ways to go.
A) Lilo or Grub for one of the distro's on the MBR. Use chainloading for XP or the other distro, with the second distro's boot loader saved to a partition for that distro.
B) Lilo or Grub for one of the distro's on the MBR. Use chainloading for XP, and have separate sections for each linux distro. The boot= lines needs to be moved from the common section to each distro section.
C) Use the Windows XP NTLDR program to boot each linux distro.

If you do B, make sure that you update the boot loader for only the first distro. Otherwise you could have a situation of dueling lilos/grubs.

Hi jschiwal,

Thanks for your tips.

From the past threads, your option A was my learning,
but I wasn't aware of the option B. I came across the
option C somewhere in LQ forums but looked too much
involved.

I think either option A or B looks reasonably comfortable.

Regards,