Does lilo/grub have to be in the MBR?
I was wondering, does lilo have to be installed to the master boot record to boot linux? What about grub? How do other operating systems boot without having a boot loader in the master boot record?
I'm just wondering because the MBR doesn't seem like a safe place to put the boot loader. If something happens to it, and you don't have a boot disk (for whatever reason) your are kinda of screwed. |
No you have several options. Some opt to install the boot loader in the first sector of the / partition.
You can also create a boot disk to boot into Linux instead of installing a boot loader on the actual hard drive. But even in most cases, even if you don't have a boot diskette, you can always use the cdrom you have that you installed from, most have a rescue option, or you can usually specify your / directory to boot to from the boot: after booting to the cd. Like my Slack box once got corrupted or something, I didn't have a boot disk so I used the slack cd. At bootup and at the boot prompt I did something like this to boot up my system: boot: Linux root=/dev/hda3 |
I have had a lot of success with putting lilo/grub in the first of the partition and using system commander to boot to my different OS's.
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eeeh! dont put it on MBR, it will overwrite system commander. I did it once accidentally and I didnt have the recovery disks, so I reinstalled everything again :D
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Excuse me , I mistyped. I meant to put lilo'grub on the first sector of the /partition
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Nah, nothing wrong with putting Lilo on the MBR if your going to use Grub or Lilo to boot from. I always install mine to MBR and never have any problems, well, maybe once or twice, usually caused by myself. ;)
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How do you install lilo on the first sector of the / partition? Is it possible to do this after you've installed linux or must this be done before the installtion begins?
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wincen, you can install lilo in the first sector of a partition when you install linux.
If you have already installed linux and put lilo in the mbr, you can edit the /etc/lilo.conf file. Look for this line boot= and change it to point to the partition where you want lilo to be installed and then run /sbin/lilo. Also, you'll have to restore the mbr by either running msdos's fdisk /mbr command or from linux /sbin/lilo -u /dev/hd??. Replace the two ?? with the correct hard drive info. |
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In most cases, if you are multi-booting with Linux, all you need is either Lilo or Grub, and my personal choice is Grub ;) . |
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