Hi,

I've Win2k in first partition and Slack in 2nd. I couldn't make a linux boot disk (wonder why). I installed Slack through CD-Rom. I've recompiled the Kernel.

When I want to boot Linux.. I put the CD-rom in and there will be a boot: prompt.

boot: usb.i root=/dev/hda4 noinitrd ro

Question is .. which kernel will the above command boot? The kernel in the CD-Rom or from my recompiled kernel? If the former, how to make sure I can boot the later?

Thanks.

Esael

I guess it'll boot the default kernel from cdrom. Do you use any bootmanager or you boot from cdrom all the time?

Working hard on a OS loader for dual boot. Mentioned the problems in another posts.

Any good solutions for win2k Pro/ Slackware dual boot?

Need to rush this by tonight and it is 8:25 pm now

Eeeeeeiiiiiikkss

Esael

Well I'll back your guess up. I was gonna say that, but was afraid I'd be wrong, and someone who knew the right answer would miss it because I had already replied.

So here's my thoughts:

I think that bare.i is a kernel image from your cdrom, whereas whatever you named your kernel image when you placed it in /boot after the compile would be the name to specify to boot with. So something like:
/boot/bzImage-custom
might be what you would type there to boot up your custom. Of course replacing with whatever you called it.

Cool

That's something I've been trying but failed.

at boot:

boot: /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda4 noinitrd ro

and various combinations.

Help!

Esael

Why not just install LILO into MBR? Is this not an option right now for you?

I've done it with no problems, here's how:

1) Let Win2K have the MBR because it's likely to just take it at some point anyway!

2) Install the Lilo loader on your Linux partition (as long as it is on a bootable drive, ie: first drive). Configure Lilo to optionally boot the Win2k partition.

3) Set the active (bootable) partition to be the Linux partition.


The computer will boot, the Win2k MBR will be read, control will be sent to the active partition (Linux/Lilo), the lilo boot menu will come up. You select which OS you want to boot. Lilo then either goes to the Linux kernel or the Win2k partition where the Win2k boot loader is.

You can bypass the whole Linux experience if you need to by simply changing the active parition back to the Win2k one.

You can boot into Linux in an emergency from your CDROM by simply setting which kernel you want to boot, and your "root=" variable. (Oh, and yes, when you boot from the CDROM, it boots the kernels that are on the CDROM only. It isn't capable of knowing where the hard drive based ones are)

^^^^^^^^

You can't do this! Lilo doesn't know about file systems, only disk tracks, heads, sectors, etc. (The "root=" part is actually just passed to the kernel, which does know about such things). This is why you run "lilo" after building your config file, it figures out which sectors of the disk it needs to go to and installs the very simple bootstrap that only knows how to get there. At the "boot:" prompt you have to select a bootable image "label" as was configured and installed in the /etc/lilo.conf file. You can get a list of the only legal selections by pushing the "tab" key at the "boot:" prompt.

Don't despair, all this stuff is really worth learning. The knowledge will help with booting problems with other OS's too.