Hey everyone...just wondering if someone can help me figure this out. I currently have Slackware 8.1 installed on an 8GB drive (/dev/hda1). I'd like to make a 10GB partition on a 60GB drive that's in the system and install Mandrake 9.0 on it. What I'm wondering is do I need to install LILO on the 10GB when I install Mandrake? Or do I just have to edit my existing lilo.conf to choose between booting Slackware or Mandrake? And what would I have to add to it?

image = /boot/vmlinuz
root = /dev/hda1
label = Linux
append = "hdd=ide-scsi"
read-only

Would I just add another entry like that for Mandrake (changing /dev/hda1 to /dev/hdwhatever of course, I think /boot/vmlinuz is pretty standard although I could be wrong on that...) and would I leave boot set to /dev/hda?

Sorry for the barrage of questions. Hope someone can help me out

You're on the right track. You do not need to install another lilo, and you do not need another swap partition either.

Copy your new kernel to your existing /boot partition (make sure it is called something other than your existing kernel...). Edit lilo.conf so the root points to your new mandrake installation, reboot and enjoy...

Copy the new /boot/vmlinuz or whatever from the Mandrake install and put it in my existing /boot dir? But rename it? And then add that line that I posted above with the new kernel and partition?

Thanks

sounds about right. what you can do is to mount your mdk /boot partition to somewhere else and then set lilo to boot that kernel directly. what it does is (afaik) just copy the exact memory location of the kernel image to the boot sector. /mnt/mdkboot/ or whatever doesn't actually need to be mounted all the time, only for when you actually run lilo. Lilo seems really straightfortward compared to Grub for basic setups, but when you start doing things like this the logic breaks down quickly, and grub's ability to just directly access any partition without mounting them etc.. makes it a lot clearer with complex setups

my lilo.conf includes
image=/vmlinuz #mandrake
label=LnxHdd3_2.4.18
root=/dev/hdd3

image=/mnt/hda5/boot/vmlinuz #
label=RedHat_7.3HD
root=/dev/hda5

lilo processes image's from wherever lilo.conf tells it.
In this case, after mounting hda5, RH is just another image.

vmlinuz is usually a link to the acutal kernel. You'll want to change your mandrake info to point to the actual kernel name. If you have the Mandrake info point to vmlinuz it'll point to the vmlinuz from redhat. I have Mandrake and Debian on one machine. I use mandy's lilo (looks nicer) but use debian as my main install. When I installed I installed Mandy first. Got it all in, with lilo setup fine. Then went in and installed debian and again let it install lilo. Then I manually entered an entry for mandrake by copying the kernel into the debian /boot partition (the actual kernel not the vmlinuz) and copying the lilo info from Mandrake into Debian's lilo. then booted reran lilo (to initialize the changes) then rebooted, and brought up Mandrake and did the same thing there to use Mandrake's lilo. (of course you could forget making the lilo changes like I did in Debian by using a boot floppy to get back into your first linux install. But the point was to let the second install install lilo so you can get the correct settings.)

copying is not required
just have a similar lilo.conf for each distro/partition as shown above
or better, as i do, keep your lilo.conf on a diskette and boot from that diskette- avoid clobbering your MBR.

Well thanks to everyone's suggestions, I got everything working. I decided to try out suSE instead of Mandrake. Anyway, one more question, can there possibly be some conflicts with the network cards? I have two cards in this machine (eth0 and eth1). Eth0 is setup for dhcp, and eth1 is setup for LAN. They both work fine in Slackware, but won't work in suSE 8.0 I have them setup correctly and when I do ifconfig eth0 or eth1 up, I get eth0: unknown interface: No such device.
Any more help would be greatly appreciated

Mike