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So me like a dumb ass left the mbr on the "primary" drive. Now I want to get rid of that drive but I cant because my OS is in the secondary drive and wont boot without the primary (what a cluster f!@k). If I boot of the slackware cd and run lilo -M /dev/sdb and create a new mbr with lilo would this help me or would it fubar my current config?
What I usually do in this situation is, that I prepare the target situation first, then boot from a CD and install the boot loader.
So, first remove the primary drive and boot from the Slackware CD. From there edit /etc/fstab and /etc/lilo.conf on your previous /dev/sdbX (which now should be /dev/sdaX), and then execute lilo to install the new boot block.
The reason for this is, that lilo examines the _current_ situation and translates /dev/sdXX to the actual BIOS drives. This translation wouldn't be valid anymore after you remove the former primary disk.
If something goes wrong you should always be able to plug the former primary disk back in and get at least into single user mode of your OS to edit /etc/fstab again (after mounting the root disk read-write).
I haven't used lilo in forever, so can't answer your general question, but you might simply try changing your BIOS boot drive, boot a liveCD (Slack or other), and chroot into your normal system.
Run lilo from there - your new disk will be the primary.
Well, I have a Computer at home with two identical SATA-drives, /dev/sda and /dev/sdb. When I once had problems because grub had damaged my MBR of sda I installed lilo without any issues in the MBR of /dev/sdb.
I don't know if this is exactly the solution for your problem, but at least this thread will provide you with additional information related to your issue.
Well, I have a Computer at home with two identical SATA-drives, /dev/sda and /dev/sdb. When I once had problems because grub had damaged my MBR of sda I installed lilo without any issues in the MBR of /dev/sdb.
I don't know if this is exactly the solution for your problem, but at least this thread will provide you with additional information related to your issue.
hope this helps
Markus
Markus,
Thanks for your reply. Your post was helpful. I will try and fix all this tonight and if anything goes wrong (Hope not :P ) than I guess ill have to start all over again. Is all my fault any ways.
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