Newbie LILO problem
 

Hi there

I'm trying to install Slackware 8.1 onto a secondary slave HD (hdd in this case). Slack setup will only allow installation of LILO onto the MBR of the first HD (the master I assume), so I decided to install it using

/sbin/lilo -M /dev/hdd

It says in the man pages that this won't disturb the primary partition table, but, guess what, I did it twice and both times the partiton table disappeared from hdd.

I suppose I could just disconnect the master HD when I install next time, but this is bugging me now. Can anyone help me get LILO on the MBR of hdd from the command line?

Why don't you want LILO on the primary hard drive? It's a boot manager, and you almost certainly want it on the primary hard drive, so you can boot from it. I'm pretty sure that if you don't want it on the primary drive, you don't want it at all.

Sorry, should have made myself more clear. The slave HD is from my tablet PC and needs to have LILO on the MBR so it will boot when I put it back in. I already have another boot manager on the master HD.

Do you know the answer to my original query? Why does the partition table get wiped when I install LILO?

Don't do this yet. I may be wrong here. Somebody correct me if I am. I think I know what he is trying to do and why, possibly.

In the very top of the lilo.conf there is this line.

I think you can change that to

and it will put on the drive you want.

Not sure. I would wait and see if I get corrected unless you want to dive into waters that may be to deep and you can't swim. Know what I mean??

I assume that when you want to boot Linux you are going to change the BIOS setting to that drive, hdd. Right???

Later.

:confused: :D :D :D

Yes Dalek, at the moment I'm trying to inflate my lifejacket. The problem with the machine I'm putting the HD back into is that it doesn't have a CD or floppy drive (there's a USB slot but BIOS doesn't support booting from USB devices) so the only option is to have the drive bootable when I put it back in. Very irregular I know, and I'm certainly into uncharted waters as far as my limited knowledge goes.

Say I do the Slack install with the master HD disconnected and run through the entire setup. Will the HD work when I put it in the tablet PC? I know that in the original setup the HD was hda, but Slack has a tendency to see any HD on my desktop system as hdc+ - it puts the two CD drives in as hda & b. Would changing the IDE channels on the CDs and HDs make a difference (I think CDs are on channel 0, HDs on 1)?

Failing that, if Slack is installed on the HD as hdc, will there be problems when I put it back in the tablet?

That may work. If not you may have to boot from a Linux floppy and make a change or two.

I would do this. Remove the drive, windoze drive, and put in the drive you want Linux on as the Primary Master. Install Slackware and such then put the drive in the other system and return the windoze drive back to its proper place.

Done that way lilo, or grub, and the fstab files should be correct and your MBR will not be messed with on the windoze drive either. Don't forget to change your BIOS when you change the drives. It may get :confused: and do a bit of :scratch: and you may :cry: a bit.

Did that make sense? I just don't know how it will work if you compile the kernel and the machines are really different.

You will be the one getting wet here.

:D :D :D :D

Thanks for your advice mate. I'll give it a try. I just hope the danged tablet PC still works after I dismantled it...

Anyone here know how to inflate these water wings?

Dare i say you are going to have problem if you install the OS as /dev/hdd and then move it back to the tab PC... the disk will then be visable as /dev/hda

The partitioning and filesystem tables will all be messed up.... best bet (if you can) is to install with the hdd in the tab pc as this will also configure the graphics and other devices... also the partitions would work correctly. I can talk you through moving from /dev/hdd to /dev/hda but it is better (in this case) not to have to.

If you are unable to use the tab pc to do the actual install, I would suggest installing it's hard disk as /dev/hda (primary master) on a donor PC and install from there...

Do tablet PC's have networking ?