My root partition is on /dev/hda5. My boot partition is on /dev/hda3. Here is where I am getting confused. In my file lilo.conf it make reference to my partition /dev/hda5(root=/dev/hda5), but not my boot partition, /dev/hda3. Doesn't it need the info off my boot partition first?

Doesn't lilo need the info on my boot partion to boot? It seems to me that that info is not on my root partition untill it boots(once it is mounted)

Forgive me about this question, I have been writing and rewriting, it is not very clear. I can not seem to get my thoughts into this post well.

When the system boots, the motherboard runs through the boot-list... It's the order it checks devices to try to boot. You might have floppy, then cd-rom, then hard-drive.

When it checks the hard-drive, it reads the Master Boot Record, and runs any code there. If you have LILO installed on the MBR, that little bit of code knows where the boot partition is, and goes there to continue booting. The info in boot then brings up the kernel and inits the system. It runs through the init scripts to bring up the rest of the system. Somewhere in there, it mounts the root partition, and any partitions set to automatically mount at start-up.

There are some systems that don't mount boot into the root filesystem at start-up. This keeps it safe from errors / users / malicious programs. To make changes, the root user would have to manually mount /boot.

<< EDIT >>

If you used a boot-floppy instead of LILO on the MBR, then you wouldn't even need a boot partition.

here is my lilo.conf. no where in there does it point to my boot partition(/dev/hda3). That is where my confusion is coming from. I must be missing something?

boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
prompt
timeout=300
message=/boot/message
lba32
default=Windoze

image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.20-20.9
label=linux
initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.20-20.9.img
read-only
root=/dev/hda5

other=/dev/hda2
label=Windoze

When you installed LILO, you installed it to the Master Boot Record of the hard-drive. There is a reference in the MBR to the boot partition. Normally, and for Windows/DOS, it points to the first partition. When you installed LILO, it changed it to point to the third partition. That little bit of code runs, and calls up the boot partition.

Imagine it like a little tiny boot-floppy sitting at the beginning of the hard-drive. The LILO program is on the MBR. You're lilo.conf is just a menu that gets called by LILO.

Once you make a choice of what to boot, and the initrd, system.map, and vmlinuz are read, the system is done with the boot partition.

It's like having the word "dictionary" defined in a dictionary. You need somebody to tell you what a dictionary is before you can look it up in the dictionary. In this case, that somebody is the LILO code in the MBR.