Can't get rid of Lilo, grub wont load why not?

johnnybezak · 02-12-2004, 03:52 PM

Ok hres my problem - i've tried to install gentoo a few times, and im pretty sure that i got the kernel config, bootloader etc. right this time and it must be the umpteenth time that i've formatted /dev/hda - anyhow for some strange reason LILO still exists somewhere on my hard disk - how do i get rid of it so that grub will boot up gentoo for me? how can it still be on the hard disk even though i've deleted all partitions and put new filesystems on them time and again? Thanks

busbarn · 02-12-2004, 04:15 PM

emerge -C lilo

when you emerge grub, be sure to set it up on the mbr llike the documentation states. Good choice going with grub--it's much easier to deal with.

darin3200 · 02-12-2004, 04:18 PM

Its in your mbr. If you have a windows boot disk you can boot with that and
fdisk /mbr
I'm not sure how to do in linux though

johnnybezak · 02-13-2004, 01:31 AM

what is the mbr? i just went with grub cos it's the default - the way they name hard disk partitions is wack! thnx for the help!

johnnybezak · 02-13-2004, 01:37 AM

hmm i tried to open /mbr with fdisk but it said that it couldnt open it (i did that with my Gentoo LiveCD) any suggestions as to where its hiding? i didnt install lilo with gentoo will emerge -c gentoo still work? thnx guys

JZL240I-U · 02-13-2004, 08:35 AM

Did you use a windows version of fdisk as darin3200 wrote?

In Linux do

Code:

dd if=/dev/nul of=/dev/hdx bs=1k count=1

where "x" in hdx is your actual drive letter.

After that the MBR contains a lot of zeros

.

CAUTION. I'm not exactly sure about the actual size of the MBR and behind that comes the data for the file system structure. Thus I recommend you do a follow-up reading on this or you do it only when you re-install anyway from scratch. In that case you can change either bs=1M or count=100 to clear any file system remnants. Also

Code:

man dd

johnnybezak · 02-13-2004, 05:27 PM

thanks jzl - turns out i had actually just misconfigured grub, when i ran setup i entered grub> setup (hd0,0) instead of grub> setup (hd0)

thanks for your help anyway - problem solved