Greetings All!

I'm totally new to Linux and after a week of trial and error I have 13.37 installed on my machine. However, there are problems.

For starters I can't get Slackware to boot unless I use a USB thumb drive. It's the only OS on my hard drive. LILO is installed but it may be configured incorrectly. I have two HDs, one with Slackware and the other with Maverick. Even if I change the boot priority in BIOS, slackware will not boot, instead my machine just cycles through BIOS initialization.

I don't know if this has any relevance but it's worth noting that I get this warning message: "/dev/sdb1 is not on the first disk". What does it mean? /dev/sdb1 is the slackware partition.

What is the "USB" you refer to? An external hard disk or flash memory?

When you say your machine won't boot without it - do you see the lilo boot splash screen when this USB device is not plugged in?

It's a bootable USB thumb drive that I created while configuring slackware on my machine. I almost skipped that step but I'm sure glad I did it now.

When the USB stick is not plugged in, I DO NOT see the lilo splash screen. Computer just cycles through the BIOS initialization.

Are you sure you installed lilo to the system?
Sounds like you may have just put it on a usb stick.
If not try:
in terminal as root
pkgtool
setup > liloconfig

Before I try your suggestion, I'm almost certain it's installed. There is a LILO configuration file in /etc:


And then there's this error file:

Ok, I'm not real sharp on lilo because I use grub but I think you just need to boot from the install dvd and use cfdisk to make whatever partition lilo is on bootable.

HI there DMTspice

boot = /dev/root <------------------------------------ Must be the device where lilo is to be installed /dev/sda or /dev/sdb
#delay = 5
# VESA framebuffer at 1024x768x64k
vga = 791
# Ask for video mode at boot (time out to normal in 30s)
#vga = ask
# Normal VGA console
#vga = normal
# End LILO global section
# Linux root partition section
image = /boot/vmlinuz
root = /dev/root <------------------------------------- The partition with Slackware on it /dev/sda1 or /dev/sdb1 etc ..

You might just add lba32 to lilo and compact if you want

After fixing that re run lilo

My lilo
# Start LILO global section
# Append any additional kernel parameters:
append=" vt.default_utf8=0"
boot = /dev/sda
compact
lba32
default = Slackware
# Linux bootable partition config ends
image = /boot/vmlinuz-custom-2.6.39
root = /dev/sda1
label = Slackware
read-only


regards

Lawrence

Okay I'll try too see if changing the configuration file works.

Don't change your bios settings and add this to your /boot/grub/menu.lst in your maverick will allow you to boot Slackware. This is assuming your maverick installation is still using grub legacy to boot.


alternative is boot up your slackware with usb key run liloconfig from terminal mode, select simple and install lilo to /dev/sdb1 partition when asked. Then add this to your /boot/grub/menu.lst

If you don't have a /boot/grub/menu.lst then you might have grub2, which is different as far as making changes.

This is from boot info script. You might understand it more than I do.

You have the bootloader (LILO) installed into boot partition. Then, you need that partition to be bootable (to have the BOOT flag) and the harddisk device (sdb) to have a properly (MS-DOS) MBR required to launch this partition boot.

So, I believe that in our case, if everything is fine but the partition is not booted, the magic keyword is called 'MBR'. In other words, we have a 'virgin' disk, partitioned of course, but without an bootable MBR. If this is the case, you need to repair the SDB's MBR executing:

Damn! I don't know if I should go with Darth Vader, colorpurple21859, or zasavage's solution.

Both Darth Vader and zasavage's and my solution are different ways of getting lilo installed to the MBR of the second harddrive. With lilo installed to the mbr of the second harddrive changing the boot disk order in bios will determine which distro gets booted.
If you don't won't to mess with bios settings, try running update-grub in maverick and see if it will pick up the slackware installation and create an entry in your grub2 menu. If update-grub doesn't pick up the slack installation then you can create a grub slackware menu item by editing the /etc/grub.d/40_custom file to add the following entry :
and then rerun update-grub again. This should give you an entry in your grub menu to chainload to the lilo bootloader installed on the second harddrive that will allow you to boot Slackware.
The following entry in /etc/grub.d/40_custom will create an entry that doesn't involve chainloading that should allow slackware to boot directly from your grub menu.
If you still have trouble booting with either of these entries, try removing the "insmod part_msdos" line and see if that helps.

Hey colorpurple21859- I tried zasavage's suggestion first because it was the easiest. So now when I boot I get a grub splash screen. Slackware is one of the options but when I select that option it returns an "error out of disk space"

I'll try your suggestion next...

Editing the /etc/grub.d/40_custom files didn't work.

With the chainloading edit, it gets me to the grub splash screen, and there's two selections: linux on /dev/sdb1 and Slackware (not sure what's going on there). There's also two different selections for Ubuntu. Selecting /dev/sdb1 cycles through bios initiation. Selecting Slackware returns "error: out of disk"

Without chainloding, both selections return "error: out of disk"

Something worth noting: At one point when I was updating grub after editing the 40_custom file, my two hard drives swapped device names. In other words, Ubuntu became /dev/sdb and slackware became /dev/sda. I noticed this in the output text after updating grub. After rebooting my computer, it went back to normal. Any insight on what's going on here?

I'm going to leave this alone for tonight my brain needs a break.