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11-25-2004, 06:05 AM
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#1
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Member
Registered: Jun 2004
Distribution: Slack
Posts: 214
Rep: 
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Why could installing LILO to MBR be unsafe?
Why could installing LILO to the MBR be unsafe? I just had to do it to get Slask to boot and was curious.
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11-25-2004, 08:03 AM
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#2
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Senior Member
Registered: Jan 2003
Location: Portland, OR USA
Distribution: Slackware, SLAX, Gentoo, RH/Fedora
Posts: 1,024
Rep:
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Because it will overwrite any other operating system's bootup. In some Linux distributions you have to explicitly tell LILO (or grub) about your windows partition for it to be able to boot into, for others it will automatically check to see if you have windows and add that as an option on the bootup menu.
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11-25-2004, 08:12 AM
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#3
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Member
Registered: Jun 2004
Distribution: Slack
Posts: 214
Original Poster
Rep:
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So if the only OS I have installed is Linux then placing LILO onto the MBR isn't really a problem?
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11-25-2004, 08:19 AM
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#4
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Moderator
Registered: Jun 2001
Location: UK
Distribution: Gentoo, RHEL, Fedora, Centos
Posts: 43,417
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well only as much as messing with the MBR ever is. it's just generally a thing not to be taken lightly, that's all.
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11-25-2004, 08:36 AM
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#5
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Member
Registered: May 2004
Distribution: Ubuntu
Posts: 583
Rep:
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it's basically there as a disclaimer
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11-25-2004, 08:47 AM
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#6
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Senior Member
Registered: Jul 2004
Location: Netherlands
Distribution: Slackware
Posts: 2,721
Rep:
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When you install lilo, it will put a copy of the overwritten sector in " /boot/boot.nnnn.
( look in your /boot-dir, i have a file /boot/boot.0300 wich is 512 bytes long )
you can restore it by using the " -u " option or copy it with "dd"
( see " man lilo " ).
egag
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11-25-2004, 09:48 AM
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#7
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Member
Registered: Jun 2004
Distribution: Slack
Posts: 214
Original Poster
Rep:
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That makes sense as I was having boot problems and found a posting advising the following:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1
which completely wiped the boot record.
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11-25-2004, 09:54 AM
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#8
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Senior Member
Registered: Jul 2004
Location: Netherlands
Distribution: Slackware
Posts: 2,721
Rep:
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" dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1 "
looks like a bad joke .
but you solved it now eh...
egag
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11-25-2004, 10:04 AM
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#9
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Member
Registered: Jun 2004
Distribution: Slack
Posts: 214
Original Poster
Rep:
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Worked perfectly. It totally wiped the MBR. I had installed RH and was switching back to Slack, but kept getting GRUB stopping the boot. Apparently RH wrote stuff to the MBR and even deleting all partitions with cfdisk wasn't getting rid of the data. Entering the dd command wiped all the partitions from the disk. Going back into cfdisk and there was just one undefined partition.
Guess it could be a bad joke if you had something to loose  |
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11-25-2004, 10:52 AM
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#10
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Senior Member
Registered: Jul 2004
Location: Netherlands
Distribution: Slackware
Posts: 2,721
Rep:
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well...i didn't know what you prob. was before you used the command, but if you
really wanted to clean the mbr..... than it's a good adviice 
egag |
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