I had what i thought was a temporary installation of Debian Woody on a dual boot system with a *crappy* but needed OS beside it. Debian has since cast a spell on me and i cannot bear the thought of wiping all my configurings and potterings that i have made/enjoyed thus far.

When i installed Debian, i installed it so that the installation program produced a boot floppy containing 4 files: ldlinux.sys, linux.bin, message.txt and syslinux.cfg. This allowed me to either leave the floppy disk in the drive (or not) which gave me the option as to which OS to boot into.

I thought it was a good idea at the time because i expected that this Debian thing was only going to be a floozy that id have a quick fling with, before moving on. As it stands, Mandrake 9 CDs are gathering dust untouched. I did actually mean to try at least 3 distros but Debian is soo.. well.. shees.. i wont go into it here.

Problem is that i want to be able to change my setup so it boots from a kernel on the HD, like every other *normal* dual boot setup is setup. Oh and while im asking, i'd like to use grub rather than lilo, i saw it on my friends Mandrake box and well.. shees again.

Can i just copy those file to the HD somewhere and tease grub or is there more to it than that? I am kinda nervous because i can not afford to loose either OS with this transition.

Just for info, i use a clean looking icewm (metal2 theme) with a few of my own customizations. Its clean, fast, effective, easy to use and when non-linux literate types see my desktop they first ask what version of windows it is, then are amazed when i say its not. I dont sell the OS, i find its at the point that it sells itself. I have 2 peeps interested in trying it now
I even make a point of saying its probably too difficult for them, but to try it for the fun of it. I prefer talking it down because i suspect they will be in for a nice surprise. Sorry for blabbing too much, my enthusiasim is at a high today because i managed to get ALSA and my printer working today! 8)

cheers!

You should be able to install grub or lilo and it should be ok. I don't think you will need anything from the floppy to do it.

just get grub or lilo if you don't have one already and install it

thanks for the help, you were right.
All i did was:

apt-get install grub
update-grub (which made a generic /root/grub/menu.lst file which was missing)
then tinkered that file to suite my situation.

all grubbed up and booting faster to boot!

cool