dual boot Slackware 10.1 with Windows XP
 

I currently have Windows xp and Slackware dualbooted for various reasons. I want to re-install windows xp because it has been acting weird lately (various crashing). Now here comes the question:

Most likely the Windows XP installation will write over the MBR (where I installed lilo). How would I re-install LILO back into the MBR? Bootdisk and execute 'lilo'?

Thanks for taking your time to read this.

create a lilo diskette so that it can boot to your slackware installation.
Then install XP.
After XP is done, boot your diskette.
Once logged into slackware from the diskette, re-run lilo overwrite the MBR

Ok thanks. :D

So, it's fine to write LILO to the MBR? The last few times I tried this, it comes up with 'Invalid partition table' and sits there....Or was that writing to the superblock...? It was one of them and it didn't work...Should I try writing to the MBR next time? What's the option for that? Just the superblock (I think that's what one of them is...)...?

mainva | aptigo | JTD out

Personally, if you going to dual boot it is easier with grub. Lilo can still do it, and its all about how you partition your hard drive. I've always written to the MBR with every distro I've played with. I love slack, so I've had to learn a little about lilo, but I've dual booted Slack/XP before so it is possible. The warning here is, DO NOT upgrade disks to dynamic inside of windows. You will totally screw up your machine.

Post if you have any errors.

hey I may sound stupid, but I'm new to useinginstalling linux and I want to install a dual boot of XP, and Slackware, how to do I do this without killing XP? like is there a resize or something? I tried Fedora but it won't install and nobody is replying to me....?

there is a tools called ntresize. Probably on sourceforge.net. That will resize the partitions. Slack will likely overwrite the masterboot record, so you'll have to manually edit lilo.conf to add the option to boot windows. Since I don't use lilo, I can' help there, but the resize utility will get you started.

Good luck

oh okay, thanks, I'll give it a try, anyone else able to help in this department? drop me an e-mail at theethan77@gmail.com -Ethan

I guess you cannot boot to the slackware cd, and re-run lilo.
i only ask because my floppy drive is not working.
obviously i hope not to re-install winxp, slackware is used by me, my girlfriend just uses xp.

here's the thing, I don't know what lilo is, nobody tells me this stuff, so what is lilo? and so I should try like a boot for the foppy or another drive?

LILO stands for LInux LOader if i remember correctly. Its a bootloader utility which you can configure to your needs.

Take a look at these howto documents:
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/LILO.html
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Linux+WinNT.html

For more complete information.

Ethan, if you are still looking for help then you may be interested in searching your town for a Linux Users Group. People who come to ours can bring their PC and we install linux while they watch so they can get an understanding of what is happening. There is at least one guy in our User Group for the major distros and if someone asks about one of the smaller obscure distro, we can usually manage.

oh that's awesome, I'll look into that... maybe I could get them to get our LANparty back up like we ahd planned this year for our high school it was going to be huge, but eh it crapped out on networking.

anywoo thanks, uh I'll check that out ;D

Hi Everyone!
I have a dual boot system (Win98/Slack 10.1). I reinstalled a Win98 -> WinXP, but I forgot creating boot floppy ("mkbootdisk") to my Linux system. The question is "How can I put lilo -> mbr ?"

/hda1 - WinXP
/hda5 - Slack 10.1

I try with Knoppix, rewrite "/mnt/hda5/etc/lilo.conf" to boot record, but i couldn't it make, because sends me back an error message. Have you guy's any idea, how can I make it done?

I try these commands in Knoppix root konsole:
root#/mnt/hda5/sbin/lilo
root#/mnt/hda5/sbin/liloconfig
root#/sbin/lilo
root#/sbin/liloconfig

I thank you for your attention!
Best wishes!

master_boy

Yeap, init with Knoopix like you did, and mount the harddisk, then use: chroot /mnt/hda5/
and run: lilo
(or liloconfig)

Thank you /*gbonvehi*/ for your idea;), it was very useful.

Best wishes!

master_boy

could you use the slackware cd instead of Knoopix to mount the drive?

Yes, I just tried it;) to mount with Slack 10.1 cd1 and it goes fine, but with Knoppix it is more comfortable:)

You can use Slackware CD1 to boot your Linux partition, just follow the directions at the boot screen.

Once you're in, run lilo or liloconf.

If you need more help, let me know.

Ok, heres where I'm at:

I installed Slackware 10.2 on my laptop already, but I didn't need to dual boot it with Windows XP because I didn't want it on the laptop anymore.

Now I want to install it on my family pc. It has 2 hard drives, one which I want to keep Windows XP on, and the other I formatted to dedicate that hard drive completely to Linux.

I know how to install it but, all of the deep configuration of lilo and all of that I need help with, if I just choose the formatted hard drive to install Slackware on and just follow the installation, what would I have to do to get Windows XP bootable with lilo and definately running. Because I won't have internet on my computer through Slackware so I wouldn't be able to come online to seek help and my family would need to use the computer. This is why I need to be sure of what I am doing and print out your advice so that if I need to troubleshoot then I have it on paper.

Can anyone help?

I'm very new to Linux but I followed this method to dual-boot Linux and XP and it works perfectly:

http://www.highlandsun.com/hyc/linuxboot.html

This uses the Windows boot manager to select the OS to boot and has the advantage that changes to the Linux installation, such as a new kernel etc, do not require any changes to the bootloader to be made. The only thing to be careful about is that anytime you need to run Lilo to make a Linux configuration change, you need to be sure that Lilo is saved to the linux boot drive and NOT the MBR.

I use this method for selecting the O/S for booting, but there is one caveat. Whenever you update the Linux kernel, or LILO configuration you may need to update "boot.lnx" as well. To help solve that problem, I created a shell script to update the LILO configuration and create a new copy of "boot.lnx". Then I just have to copy the file the next time I boot Windows XP.

It is possible to put Linux in the Windows XP boot menu, and also put Windows XP in the LILO boot menu. Then it doesn't matter which you set as the default (active) primary partition that boots first.

Toods you have right. Buth here is another (I think simplest) way to make dual boot with lilo. During your installation (in a boot loader section), you will find option where to install lilo, and you can choose which OS will be load by default;)
If the install process does not recognize the other OS [Windows], and you installed the lilo into the (MBR) master boot record. You should edit the /boot/lilo.conf and put this string:

other = /dev/hdaXX //XX the number the partition where the windows is
label = Windows
table = /dev/hda //HDD where the MBR is

after editing the lilo, require to re-run /sbin/lilo to apply new changes.

I hope, this short reply help you.

Best wishes!

master_boy

> hey I may sound stupid, but I'm new to useinginstalling linux and I want to install
> a dual boot of XP, and Slackware, how to do I do this without killing XP?

Some of the liveCD distros like Kanotix have qtparted available. You can resize NTFS partitions with this. I just did it today. When you reboot winbloze it will go through a (possibly VERY) long check of the disk and after that mine ran faster than ever! Then you can fdisk from Linux to do whatever you want with the remaining partitions.

Also, if liloconfig (from Slackware 10.2 installation) doesn't install in the MBR for you (I keep getting an error) then just use the commands shown by Gary in http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=404456

If you are installing in MBR of your primary (only) disk which is hda, instead of hda# (as was mentioned in the post I linked-to) use this to do a test-drive without installing anything:

lilo -v -t -b /dev/hda

Gary points out: If you get no errors then do:

lilo -v -b /dev/hda

Later,
Rand

Check your BIOS for any anti-virus or MBR protect setting. (I know, It's basic, but I forget all the time....lol)

Also, lets say you are installing Slackware after you installed XP. When it gets to the lilo part, do a 'expert setup', start with a blank lilo.conf, fill in those blanks, then on the main screen, choose whichever OS you want to boot as the default first, then choose the second. i.e. If you want XP to be default, choose Windows first, then Linux. It writes the lilo.conf file in the order in which you choose them.

I'm pretty sure there's a bug in the liloconfig part of the slackware installation script. Everybody is reporting that lilo doesn't get installed. You can see the problem more easily when you boot the installation kernel and select liloconfig from setup. Then you can see the error screen, which says that there isn't any lilo.conf

It does create lilo.conf, but the script can't find it for some reason.

I have had no problem at all. But, then again, I ALWAYS use the 'expert install' option for lilo. Might be in the regular install part

I also used the expert option. And it doesn't install anything. It says that lilo.conf can't be found. But there it is in /etc just like it's supposed to be.

And many, many people are reporting the same problem. So it's pretty obvious that this is broken and someone should look into it.

Very similiar issue
 

Hello! I am both new here as well as new to linux. I have heard a lot of really great things about slackware so I really wanted to install it and get my hands wet.

I have two hard drives, 40 gig with windows xp installed and a 200 gig with a 40gig linux partition at the beginning of the disk.

I pretty much get all the way through the installation just fine, but i think i am running into issues with the lilo configuration. Its kinda strange because it really doesnt seem like it should be this hard.

Basically, I have tried to setup lilo on the MBR and there are no errors during the process. The issue is when i reboot.

When i reboot, it basically goes to a black screen with the following.

L 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01

It basically does this for a few different lines and just sits there...I guess im kinda under the asumption that doing this hosed the MBR. i checked my bios and it is not EZ Bios and there is no antivirus with it as well...

has anyone ever seen anything like this??? pretty crazy! anyways, any help or advice you can offer would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

I think that after reading many posts and playing around with lilo that I have an idea what may be causing some people to have problems with lilo installation. As cwwilson pointed out, one reason is BIOS MBR protection stopping lilo (or anything else) from modifying the MBR.

Another reason is that there is a bug in lilo in search order for disk devices. For example, if I plug in a USB drive I get errors from lilo when I try to install to the MBR of /dev/hda.

I think many of these errors go unrecognized because people are running lilo from config scripts and don't see lilo output.


What I have never heard of is lilo corrupting an MBR. Although updating the MBR properly is extremely critical, it isn't that complicated compared to a lot of other software people have written, and I think lilo works pretty well.

The fact that you have two drives raises a question with lilo because of the bug I noted earlier.

Show us the output from fdisk -l and give us your lilo.conf and it should be simple to get things straightened out.

Thanks for the response!

The fdisk -l command gives me this:

And my lilo reads like this
i tried to not post a lot of the commented areas. if these are needed let me know and i will post this again!

Thanks for the help!

Mmm I think that lilo wasn't properly installed. If you read lilo's man page, you can know about what the letter L and the number 01 means.
Try reinstalling lilo, boot from CD as stated some posts above, and use -v switch to receive more details of lilo when it's installing: lilo -v -v -v

<Sorry clicked twice>

Hey man, I have some questions here because it looks like you have three systems you are trying to boot, and I think we only talked about two. According to your fdisk -l you have 2 NTFS partitions and one linux, is this what you wanted? Your lilo.conf is set up to boot the windows on the /dev/hdc drive but it looks like you will have another windows (which with this config, anyway) you don't wanna boot on hdd in the middle of the drive. Why are the partitions so whacked out? Things should be in order, and contiguous. I think some additional fdisking is in order to clean up this mess...

Also, note that lilo freaks out because you have two drives. I've noticed this before. Fdisk is also giving a wierd message about partitions being out of order, but it lists two partitions that aren't even on the same drive!

There is a typo: "tabel" should be "table" in your windows entry. I think the intervening comments should be fine, but let's not take any chances. How about this:

If I missed something and the 2nd NTFS partition is just to share between Win and linux then don't configure it in lilo.conf. If you want to boot it, change it to bootable with fdisk because Windows won't boot from a partition not mounted bootable according to other posts.

You should get on the linux system (if you can boot it, otherwise bring up a liveCD with linux and chroot into your linux or at least have the kernel mounted where lilo can find it from your lilo.conf. Then (as root) do

lilo -v -t -b /dev/hdc

And read the output carefully. If it looks like what you want, do

lilo -v -b /dev/hdc

Sorry about the late reply, I was out.

Good luck and don't toast anything!

I screwed up when typing some of this out... totally my fault.

the partitions are something like this.

I do agree with you though, this does look a little tweaked... I have windows(which was installed first) on /dev/hdc1 then i have an ntfs partition, mainly just storage space on /dev/hdd2

is partition magic known for writing bad partition tables like this? (thats what i used to partition the disks)

Thanks for the response...
Would it just be easier to install linux on another partition on /dev/hdc1?
as stated in the fdisk table above, this partion is an ntfs partition. can i create a partition after that and install slack on it? then install lilo on the MBR?

Try not to type stuff in- grab it with cut and paste and copy it into the browser so we know what's going on.

According to the latest info which is:

Check me on these facts:

1) You have a bootable Win on /dev/hdc (and it's consuming the whole 40G)
2) You have a linux partition on /dev/hdd
3) You have a non-bootable NTFS partition (for sharing) on /dev/hdd

If I understand correctly, then:

1) Consider whether you really want a 40G Windows. If you do, fine, if not, you have room for a couple of healthy-sized linux or *bsd systems on the same drive. To find out how much Windows space you need, defrag (repeatedly) until all the free space is at the end, and you'll be able to see how much you actually need.
2) You have considerable wasted space (15 cylinders) on /dev/hdd; as we noted earlier this should be cleaned up.
3) This is a very nice drive and you can put tons of linux distros on here. But, remember that if you want to install *bsd (FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD) you need to install them in primary partitions (and you only get 4 of those) so plan accordingly.

I think you really have to decide what you want to do. Right now it seems like it's difficult to know what to do because you haven't decided what to do. You can't plan disk utilization until you have some idea of what you want to accomplish.

I think the best things to do are:

1) Decide if you want to keep Windows or not.
2) If you want Windows, decide how much space you want for it, then resize the NTFS partition with qtparted.
3) Decide if you want to run *BSD or not. This has to be an early consideration because of the primary partition requirement of *BSD. (I would like to try some, but I can't, because I'm fresh out of primary partitions.)
4) Write down a map (on paper) of how many systems you'd like, what you'll use them for, and where you want them to live, remembering that *BSD should really be in partitions 1-3, and that Windows should be installed first, in 1.

To answer your questions:

1) I don't have any experience with PartitionMagic. I did use qtparted from the Kanotix liveCD and it worked perfectly. It's free and it runs on linux, which are 2 things that PartitionMagic doesn't do. That was enough for me.
2) I don't have experience with lilo on multi-drive installations, but I've used it a lot on my little setup. I also read a lot of posts, and the majority of people to use lilo in the MBR. That's what I did, and it works perfectly.

If you are not careful and just slap linux distros wherever you have space, your drives will be a sloppy mess (like hdd is already looking) and you will waste space and paint yourself into a corner where you can't do what you wanna do. A little planning and careful fdisking will allow you to run tons of distros with plenty of room to spare. Pay attention and make sure subsequent partitions are allocated on the next even cylinder boundary.

Darwinkid, where are you on this situation now? I ask because this thread has been quiet now for almost two months. I assume you solved things OK.

In any case, I also have seen all those zeros on a black screen. Two years go, I was installing Linux and had LILO on, but then I failed the main Linux installation. I didn't know enough about Linux to know how to get rid of LILO. I needed to do that without having a working install of Linux on my machine.

I don't know whether I'd say that LILO corrupted my files, or that I corrupted my files myself. The problem resulted in bad clusters and the loss of the best ME setup I'll probably ever have. I was running both ME and XP, and trying various Linuxes. It wasn't really worth fixing up ME again, but that was such a sweet-running ME and it had taken months to make it work that well—a big loss.

I was able to reboot by using a floppy with a bootmanager on it. That worked fine. But if I recall, the lingering problem persisted until I finally did a low-level format on that hard drive. It definitely went through several XP repairs without being repaired.

It was explained to me (by a 14-year old) just what the zeros represented. It was an "overflow" of some sort. I might be able to research it more if you are still working on this one.

For interested folks who've never seen it, it is all rows and columns of 01s, covering the entire screen, and slowly scrolling down, endlessly. (It looks like a screen-saver.) All very neat and tidy, so:

01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01
01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01
01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01
01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01
01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01
01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01

. . . forever. Indeed, a pretty spectacular disaster!

Hey ya'll, check this out. pretty cool. i stumbled accross this last nite cause my windoz xp box got the "ntldr file missing" error. anywho. i decided to dump windoz altogether. so i installed slackware 10 on a 40g hd. about 3 hrs later i found that i couldn't live without playing those darn games. well i found VMware. it goes like this...
i unplugged my 40g hd containing slackware. installed my windoz on my 130g hd. once done, i plugged in my 40g slackware drive. since this is winxp, well i just told it not to mount the drive anywhere. i installed VMware in winxp and for the virtual machine hd i used the raw disk containing my slackware. since linux don't complain about not havving a boot flag set on a drive well both op sys think they are on /dev/hda1. give it a try. will make things a lot easier. although not verry cheap ($199.00).
will be nice when someone makes a free or atleast inexpensive virtual machine to do this.
(whatever ya do don't set a bootable flag on the linux drive or ya will have probs booting. i install lilo to mbr)
now if i have anymore probs with windoz i can still work in linux. just unplug win and boot. :)

Randux, this is not a new post, but I might mention:

—Defragging does not necessarily clean everything to one neat package at the front of the drive. There is a tendency for it to do something toward that, but there are various common reasons why some files may remain at the tail end of the drive. The belief that a cleanly defragged drive will have only free space at the tail end sometimes causes data loss, so it is good to check and see.

—I agree with your second comment. Partion Magic had its heyday before XP. XP's [Control Panel >Admin Tools >Computer Management] Disk Management is a beautiful tool, and would take the user right up to the one you recommend, so there is no need to use Partition Magic. Not for the past 6 years. But, some would argue, Disk Management doesn't adjust the size of a specific partition. True, but it does turn that into a generally undesirable strategy, because it makes everything else so very, very easy in Windows or in setting free space aside for Linux. From there, the user can return to Linux and proceed as you suggested if he really wants to resize.

IMHO. :-)

Adding another Linux installation to LILO on Slackware
 

Hi
How do you add another linux installation to the booting list?

I`ve kubuntu on /dev/hda10
hda10 is mounted as /linK on Slackware 10.2. Also, the boot file for kubuntu is /linK/boot/vmlinuz 2.6...
I tried Boot Loader configuration tool on slackware, but it says "no file found /linK/boot/vmlinuz 2.6..."

The easiest thing to do is run liloconfig. That will start you all over again.

The 2nd easiest thing to do is to go to your /etc/lilo.conf file in your Slackware distro (aka "1st installation") and edit the lilo.conf file, adding the following to the end:

image=/linK/boot/vmlinuz #(or whatever you called your kernel image for KUbuntu... copy the location as you see it from slackware)
root=/dev/hda10
label=Kubuntu
read-only

Save your lilo.conf file.
** MOUNT YOUR /linK DIRECTORY!!!!
then run lilo to update the map.

Given your error, I'd say that you failed to make sure lilo could see the kubuntu boot image.

--vonSt

Thanks a lot vonst.
Kubuntu boot image did not have its permission set to executable.
I made the changes, Boot Loader configuration tool worked successfully and lilo.conf looks like shown above.

Now when the booting list comes up and Kubuntu is selected, the display goes blank and system hangs up !

Shoot, that could be anything! Did you check for cockroaches? I haven't had your problem w/ Linux. I have had it happen when I select "Windows". Why? I dunno. I'm not savvy enough.

Here's an idea, tho. Double check that /dev/hd10/boot directory. See if you can touch a test file into it. Maybe LILO isn't able to write boot.XXXX into the directory because it's locked out.

And then, if that's not it, I'm scratching my head. I don't understand OS intricacies enough.

--vonSt

Kubuntu also needs to load a initrd image, make your lilo.conf look like:

Edit: Remember to run lilo again.

I just completed another dual boot install, and maybe would like to suggest a few things:

I've tried every way suggested here in the past, and there was always some fly-in-the soup thingy that made me wish I'd done it differently. So, here's what I do now.

1. Download Rescue CD and burn it to CD. (The intructions on site tell you how to do this). this will give you a bootable Linux kernel, but more importantly, it will give you Qt Parted, allowing you to partion for Linux, Win, and more. This loads in RAM, so your HD isn't mounted. Very important.

2. Download GAG ( a very nice free boot manager). Make the boot disc using on-site instructions.

3. Now, go to windows, and defrag that HD. This puts your files to the front of the partition and will allow you to shrink it if necessary. (don't ask how I learned this the hard way:)

4. Now stick that bootable Rescue CD in the drive and re-boot. AS it re-boots, hit <delete> usually, or whatever your manual says, to get in the bios. Search for "boot sequence" and set it to boot CD, HD0, in that order.

5. Rescue CD will load; answer the questions about your keyboard and mouse. No big deal. On the screen it tells you how to run QT_Parted. A very simple and graphical partioning program. Use the help if you need to. No changes will be made till you "commit".

6. You can shrink your existing WIN partion, delete partions, add new ones, based on your needs. I used 8G for NTSF primary, a 1G linux swap (you only need ONE of these for them all), and 3 partitions of 8 G's for linux distros. Don't format these. Let your install do this for you. Slack insists...BTW, I use "logical partions" for all the Linux stuff, even swap. Why? You can have 3 primary, plus 1 extended partition CONTAINING up to 64 logical partitions. Linux doesn't care where it's installed. So, you KNOW your swap is #5 (linux names the first logical as #5, the next as #6, etc. #1 is your XP WIN, naturally. Write this down! Which distro will be on which partition. Windows needs a primary, naturally. You can also set the "type" partition you want. (type 82 for Linux swap, 83 for Linux ext-3, Fat 32, etc.) *** tip here. You may want to add a Fat 32 at the end of your disc and use for your data. That way, both Linux and Windows can access it. Also makes for easier back-ups. Linux can't write to a NTSF, I don't think. But can write to any FAT. DON'T use all your disc if you don't need to. It can save your backside later. 3G will do>

7. If you have Win installed, leave it alone. If you want to re-install, go ahead and use partition #1, XP will find it. Don't allow it to use the whole DISC! Or any distro either.

8. NOW, when you install your distros (all boot up from CD), MAKE SURE TO INSTALL LILO on the root partition, NOT the MBR. Otherwise, WIN won't boot. You may have to hit >BACK> a few times in the install process to get it right. Every distro has it's quirks. Slack plays nice, though. I believe Grub is OK, too, IF you put it in the root partion NOT the MBR and THEN set it to active. LILO does this automatically.

9. The rest is easy. Put in your GAG boot manager and re-boot. Read the instructions. Install it (either to your HD OR a floppy) I like the HD, it's easy to un-install. Add your operating systems that you wrote down (you wrote them down, right?) GAG will pick up every partition that has a bootable operating system and that is set ACTIVE. XP does this automatically, so does lilo, BUT, I believe grub does not. So, use lilo, right?

10. The fun part now. You give all your OS's a name AND a little icon to boot it with. The good news is that there is no time-out feature when you re-boot. You can get a cup of coffee and not worry the box booted into default boot, like using LILO, GRUB, or Win XP;s boot thingy which overwrites everything. BUT you can add a time-out and passwords, and remove/add OS's at anytime.

You can also UN-INSTALL GAG at anytime and it reverts back to the original XP install (it saves the MBR infor Win wrote). This allows you to dump all those installs amd get back to a WIN only system OR install more and not mess with WIN at all. I believe GAG can handle 12 or so, OS's. Plus it's prettier than all the rest (although a geek could make lilo look OK), But, if your WERE a geek, you wouldn't be reading this, right??

Have fun. And feel free to e-mail me if you want.

mr. mike (newbie of the first order)

Thanks...
It worked, but you also have to pass additional parameters "quiet" and "splash".