Hi,

I externally installed a Slackware in a Qemu .img, and I would like to write the MBR as the system obviously doesn't boot.

I mounted the drive with :
qemu-nbd -c /dev/nbd0 hd.img
mount /dev/nbd0p1 /mnt/zip/

The partitions are ok :
sfdisk -d /dev/nbd0
# partition table of /dev/nbd0
unit: sectors

/dev/nbd0p1 : start= 63, size= 39070017, Id=83, bootable
/dev/nbd0p2 : start= 39070080, size= 2872960, Id=82
/dev/nbd0p3 : start= 0, size= 0, Id= 0
/dev/nbd0p4 : start= 0, size= 0, Id= 0

I wrote a lilo.conf with some /dev/sda parameters, but I get :
/mnt/zip/sbin/lilo -A /dev/nbd0 -C /mnt/zip/etc/lilo.conf
Fatal: Not a device with partitions '/dev/nbd0'

/mnt/zip/sbin/lilo -M /dev/nbd0 -C /mnt/zip/etc/lilo.conf
Fatal: /dev/nbd0 is not a master device with a primary parition table

Any suggestion ?

Can you show contents of /mnt/zip/etc/lilo.conf file.

# LILO configuration file

append=" vt.default_utf8=1"
boot = /dev/sda
bitmap = /boot/slack.bmp
bmp-colors = 255,0,255,0,255,0
bmp-table = 60,6,1,16
bmp-timer = 65,27,0,255

prompt
timeout = 20

change-rules
reset

vga = normal

image = /boot/vmlinuz
root = /dev/sda1
label = Slack-du-jour
read-only

Try changing
boot = /dev/sda
to
boot = /dev/nbd0

Then run lilo as you did.

In old days I used lilo but not nowadays. May be qemu-nbd is not supported by lilo, not sure.

I have the same errors.

Bump.

Another bump.

May you like to use grub 0.98 legacy as bootloader?

I don't care, but at some point, the MBR has to be written so I fear that using grub will change nothing.

I can provide steps to use grub legacy. But can you give details of how you have setup the slackware partitions, mount points, whether using Lvm, and cryptsetup.

Also provide what filesystems you are using with partitions. And provide how you are going to run that hd.img via e.g. qemu?

Well that would be welcome (hoping that it works), the setup is simple : sda1 ext4 + sda2 swap

Where is /boot present? Is it within sda1. Are the kernel and if using initrd/initramfs present within them - /boot.

Before proceeding with using grub legacy there is another way to boot the slackware with qemu. You can get kernel/initrd/initramfs from /boot and use qemu's '-kernel' and '-initrd' option to boot slackware. After booting it you can install lilo bootloader from within qemu.

You can make a grub legacy floppy boot disk to boot a system under qemu.

1) Get the binary file from grub-0.97-i386-pc.tar.gz

2) Untar it in a temp dir.

3) Get stage1 and stage2 binary file from it.

And run like this:

Check that size of floppy.img is exactly 1474560 bytes long.

Now boot the hd.img with:

You would see grub legacy booted. Use this to boot whatever distro in hard disk file image.