Hey all

Currently i have three HD's, two Sata 120's which are in software raid 0 running windows 2k, and i have and IDE 30g which is running slackware 10-current, normally in the past i would just enter the bios and change the startup boot disk to which ever os i wanted to go into.
My question is.....is their anyway i can get lilo to dual boot the two? the controller is nForce4. I was thinking it may be possible to use the Ntloader to dual boot the two, that way i don't have to get slackware to see the array....but i would like to use lilo instead, anyone know if this is possible?

Thanks

Try to use Grub, is great!!! I have 3 operating systems on mi machine(win 98, win xp, Slackware).

Have been avoiding RAID so far because many Linux may have have a problem to recognise a Sata, let alone a RAID.

Suggest to do a

fdisk -l

in root terminal in Slackware to see if your Win2k partition shows up.

Slackware needs Sata.i kernel to recognise Sata disks. If your Slackware shows up the Win2k partition, say sda1 then you can add these lines in /etc/lilo.conf for booting Win2k

other=/dev/sda1
label=My_Win2k

You need to revalidate Lilo every time you amend its lilo.conf by typing

lilo

after editing and saving the file.

Using NTLDR may be the only option if Slackware can't make out where your Win2k partition is. Many Linux could see your RAID as two separate disks.

Installing Grub just passing the bug from Lilo to Grub.

I think that NTLoader is going to be your best option
Most likely.

If you follow the dual boot FAQ for NT and Linux you should be able to boot both OSes without entering BIOS.
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Linux+NT-Loader.html

In general, you will need to grab the bootsector from the slack distro and make it available (copy it) to your windows c:\

Not knowing your exact disk setup, it's hard to give exact directions on the process.

The advantage of this method is that you will not have to worry about copying over the MBR if you ever have the need to reinstall windows.

General directions follow:

Boot into Slack
#dd if=/dev/hdx# of=/root/bootsect.lnx bs=1 count=512
where the x and # in /dev/hdx# are the correct drive and partition where lilo is installed.

That should create the file named bootsect.lnx with a size of 512b in the /root directory.
Find it and copy it to removeable media that windows and linux both can read. ( I use USB Memory stick, but have used floppys, and CD-RW also)

Once copied, boot into windows, and copy bootsect.lnx to c:\
Then you must have rw access to boot.ini (a hidden system file located at c:\).
It looks something like this:
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
c:\bootsect.lnx = "Slackware Linux"


just add the last line and set your system to boot from your windows RAID.
On reboot, it should give you the option to boot both windows and slackware.

Hey guys thanks for your reply, i just got done compiling and installing a custom 2.6 kernel so i think they best option now that i got the kernel the way i like it is to follow DyeKid's advice and to setup the dual boot using the NTloader. right now i'm stuck at work so won't be able to finish it until i get home. thanks again.

Great - thanks for that!

I have a dual SATA disk system which also has a 120GB IDE onto which I wangt to install Linux - /dev/sdb1 has the MBR.

Try as I might, I couldn't get the Slack 10.1 install to recognise my SATA disks - until I chanced upon this post and used sata.i as the kernel (I didn't know this option existed!).

Thanks!

The command is: dd if=/dev/hdxx of=/root/bootsect.lnx bs=512 count=1.

I just did this for my laptop. It's working great, except that I cannot get rid of the lilo red menu. Even after I commented out the necessary lines to get rid of it, then running /sbin/lilo -v. Maybe I should post the output of /sbin/lilo -v here to see if you guys catch something I missed.

DOH!!! One gotcha about using XP bootloader: Don't forget to update the bootsect.lnx file after making changes to LILO. That's why I was not able to get rid of the LILO menu. DOH!!!