[SOLVED] Setting up GRUB2 to replace Lilo for Slack 14.0

Mercury305 · 10-03-2012, 02:30 PM

Hi, I would first like to congrats Patrick and team with the new Slack 14 which I recently downloaded and am currently seeding.

I currently run a bunch of different distros on my machine. I would like Slackware to be one of them without sacrificing 1 for the other. I currently have an excellent setup with Fedora 17's Grub2 in which all my OS's bootup including windows perfectly with no problems at all... that is except Slackware due to Lilo incompatibilities.

So I would like to be able to boot Slackware as well but using Grub2 instead of Lilo. How can this be accomplished?

elvis4526 · 10-03-2012, 02:35 PM

At the installation of Slackware, just skip the part when it speak about lilo or any boot loader. After, in your fedora install, update grub2 configuration with the appropriated tools and it should see the Slackware install and add an entire for it in the grub menu.

Mercury305 · 10-03-2012, 03:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by elvis4526

At the installation of Slackware, just skip the part when it speak about lilo or any boot loader. After, in your fedora install, update grub2 configuration with the appropriated tools and it should see the Slackware install and add an entire for it in the grub menu.

I have an entry setup but it cant boot from there...

Alien Bob · 10-03-2012, 03:07 PM

Why don't you install lilo to the Slackware root partition and then let Grub do a chainload of lilo ?
Or tell Grub2 to load the Slackware kernel plus initrd if you did not install lilo. That should work too, I use this setup on my work laptop.

Eric

Mercury305 · 10-03-2012, 03:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alien Bob

Why don't you install lilo to the Slackware root partition and then let Grub do a chainload of lilo ?
Or tell Grub2 to load the Slackware kernel plus initrd if you did not install lilo. That should work too, I use this setup on my work laptop.

Eric

Yes, that is where I flunked. I should have installed it to root partition I forgot it was on the previous MBR that was replaced by grub. That was a dumb mistake I did. Thanks, also thanks for the 2nd way of doing it as well. Cheers!

ReaperX7 · 10-03-2012, 09:01 PM

Try this if all else fails.

Skip the LILO install and use the Slackware disk to rescue style boot.

Login as normal.

Download the latest Grub2 and it's dependencies from slackbuilds.org, install, and do this:

Code:

mkdir /boot/grub
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
grub-install /dev/sda

I did this using the default huge kernel and everything works.

Grub2 is a bit more of a pain to customize, but after you learn the ins and outs of creating the configuration files using a terminal, it's easy.