I want to use lilo to boot an OS that uses grub as default.

The reason for this is that I want to dual boot Mandrake (grub) and DamnSmallLinux (lilo). DSL will be putting lilo in the MBR.

Mandrake currrntly has Grub in the MBR, and I have the grub.conf file, but have no idea how to convert one to the other.

Can anyone help?

Thanks in advance,

unholy

Can you post your lilo.conf and your grub.conf here. It would help a lot. I am not familiar with lilo, but know a lot about grub. Probably there is a pattern you should follow in both. Just post them here and we'll work from there on.

Peace!

Thanks marghorp,

Sorry for the late reply, but internet access for me isnt as good as id like!

Heres my grub.conf (menu.lst)

Well, the first thing you have to ask yourself is, Why do you want LILO and GRUB. You can just have one. Right? If you install DSL, yes it will overwrite MBR, but you can rescue MBR from mandrake, and just put in the line to your grub.conf file, that would point to the DSL, and thus you would be using grub for both LILO and GRUB are just loaders, they can do the same stuff, so why not use only one?

Examine the lines in your grub.conf file:

kernel /vmlinu....

you find the file vmlinu... in your /boot directory. And you can find the initrd.img file in your /boot directory. So there must be some pattern in DSL also. It comes from knoppix, so maybe the knoppix page would help you a little. However, there should be a vmlinuz file in DSL also. Just install DSL, and boot into DSL and find where the file is. Probably it will be in /boot directory. So all you have to do next is rescue Mandrake and install GRUB into the MBR and change grub.conf so that another entry points to DSL.

But let's work one step at a time.

Install DSL.

thanks marghorp,

I guess I misphrased my original question. I only want to use grub or lilo, not both (and preferrably grub). But the actual distos use different ones, so I want to tell grub to boot DSL.

I have installed DSL and I will use the advice you have given me. Thanks a lot - and I'll let you know how I get on!

unholy

I;ve had no luck so far I'm afraid marghorp. Grub gives me this error for the entry I added to grub.conf

the root folder for DSL is on hda3, while / is on hda4

There was no vmlinuz executable in /boot, so I copied it from /. Probably a bad idea

initrd is on /

Can you help?

So you are trying to start DSL from GRUB. Boot from the DSL bootdisk and once in DSL try to find the files (vmlinuz-xxxxx and initrd-xxxx.img) These are the two files you must find. Once you know where they are, it is simple to point at them.

The entry should look like:

title DSL
root (hd0,0)
where 0 and 0 are the numbers of your harddrive and the partition on that harddrive, where DSL is on. You can get those in MDK in console if you type as root: fdisk -l
kernel /vmlinuz-xxxx ro root=/dev/hda1
where vmlinuz-xxxx is the name of the file you found and /dev/hda1 is the name of your harddrive and the partition that DSL is on
initrd /initrd-xxxxx.img
This is optional, DSL should boot even without this.

Try this. Or try experimenting at GRUB console, until you get it right. Eventually you will:

The commands in GRUB command line you need are:

find filename (outputs (hd0,0) or something like it)
root (hd0,0) (or what you got from find command)
kernel /pathtovmlinuzfile ro root=/dev/hda1 (what you get from find /pathtovmlinuzfile)
boot (this boots the system, do this only if all the other commands did not return any errors, because otherwise you will just have to reboot once again)

Good luck!

Peace!

Hey I got it I didnt realise that the initrd@ was just a soft link to the initrd.img-......

That fixed it.

Thanks for all the info marghorp!

No problem, glad to see you make it.

Peace!