Lilo multibooting problem

astrogeek · 10-14-2008, 12:30 AM

Yes - you are booted into Debians filesystem with the Slackware kernel.

It is easy to put back as it was - but you must do it exactly and carefully...

FIRST you must mount the Slackware partition while in your confused boot, create a mount point like slackmnt/ for example, then ...

mount /dev/hda8 slackmnt/

SECOND you must 'chroot' into THAT filesystem...

chroot slackmnt/

THIRD - VERIFY, VERIFY, VERIFY that you are in fact on the slack filesystem - look at some file that only exists there or something...

FOURTH - Edit lilo.conf and change the root=/dev/hda9 BACK to root=/dev/hda8 and run lilo again - this will reinstall the bootloader just as it was before...

FIFTH - Reboot and verify that you are back as it was - then make no more changes until we have a plan...

In the even that you have problems with chroot or running lilo from that location, please just be patient or you might end up with a system that does not boot at all...

Have to run now - hope this helps.

brianL · 10-14-2008, 04:19 AM

This is from my lilo.conf, with lilo in the MBR, and Ubuntu's Grub in its root. Obviously the third distro and partition numbers are different, but it may give you some idea of how lilo.conf should look:

Code:

# Windows bootable partition config begins
other = /dev/sda1
  label = Windows
  table = /dev/sda
# Windows bootable partition config ends
# Linux bootable partition config begins
image = /boot/vmlinuz-generic-smp-2.6.24.5-smp
  initrd = /boot/initrd.gz
  root = /dev/sda2
  label = Slackware_G
  read-only
image = /boot/vmlinuz
  root = /dev/sda2
  label = Slackware_H
  read-only
# Linux bootable partition config ends
other = /dev/sda5
  label = Ubuntu

kcynice · 10-14-2008, 07:20 PM

I know how to fix it now. When i login, i installed lilo in the debian system, after that, use liloconfig to configure it, therefor, liloconfig will add my debian and windows entrance to lilo.conf. Ok, i just mount my slack partition and follow astrogeek's guideline to add a entry for slackware, all the things work well now.

but, i get delete the map line, otherwise there would be an error which says 'Syntax error at or above line 75 in file "/etc/lilo.conf"。so, i simply delete the map line, then it can work, but gets a warning like 'The boot sector and the map file have *NOT* been altered', i installed it, and it can lead me to my debian and slackware well. Then i login my slackware and installed lilo again, all the things were then same.
my debian entrance like:
image = /mnt/hd/debian/boot/vmlinuz
root = /dev/hda9
initrd = /mnt/hd/debian/boot/initrd.img
#map = /mnt/hd/debian/boot/coffee.bmp
label = Debian
read-only

*: I had copy a new file with a short filename from the old ones.
Why?