Reinstalled LILO, now it boots directly to Windows XP
 

Here is my drive configuration

/hda1 - Windows XP drive C:
/hdb1 - Windows XP drive F:
/hdb2 - Swap file
/hdb3 - /
/hdb4 - /boot/

/hdb4 is placed at the very begining of the drive, by the way.

My problem is that when I installed Slackware 10, I chose for it to be installed on the MBR of my first drive, because when I tried putting it elsewhere, it would just boot directly to Windows XP.

However, durring installation, I made a few poor choices relating to my console font. As it stood, I had a framebuffer for my console, and it really started to annoy me. I decided to go into lilo.conf and change to vga=normal. I then installed lilo through /sbin/lilo.

Unfortuniatly, when I rebooted it to test this out, it booted straight into Windows XP, with no lilo prompt at all. What? I would have thought that even if install messed up, it would still use the old lilo configuration....

I think I can still get to my linux partition and reinstall lilo again by putting in my slackware setup CD, mounting my root directory, and reinstalling lilo that way. However, I'm not sure if I put in the correct paramitors when I reinstalled lilo, and the lilo man pages are a little over my head. I don't really want to reinstall, because I spent an afternoon figuriong out how to configure X to my liking through configuration files, and I don't want to reinstall a third time unless I really have to.

Or, would I be better off with grub, like I had in Fedora Core 2?

Thanks in advance.

just use the xp bootloader to load linux, it's more smple.

dd if=[where lilo installed, see lilo.conf] of=bootsect.lnx bs=512 count=1
then copy the bootsect.lnx in the C: drive in win
then edit the c:\boot.ini and
under [operating systems] add this line

c:\boot\bootsect.lnx="Linux"

I see. But how do I install LILO to the MBR again?

You know, just in case...

run liloconfig as root

use lilo rather than the ntldr bootloader - it's much more intelligent

While in linux type either lilo or lilo -f /etc/lilo.conf

If you run "lilo" all you will do is install the /etc/lilo.conf file that you already have on your system. If you have that file messed up (which you obviously do since you've done this and it won't boot), then you'll need to reinstall LiLO altogether (as you've stated and asked 'how to do').

If you run "lilo -f /etc/lilo.conf" all you're doing is specifying the disk geometry parameter file. This is not necessary, and it will give you output such asor something that will be of no value to you, with your present knowledge of your OS and LiLO.

You can boot into Slack with the Slackware-10.0 CD1 by booting with it and then at the prompt type
# bare.i root=/dev/hdb3 noinitrd ro
and that should get you back into Slackware.

All you need to do is run "liloconfig" as previously stated, and then choose the expert installation method. Open a terminal, such as xterm, login as root, and type "liloconfig" without the quotes. If you need help knowing what to choose, there are some instructions in this thread - read Post #7.

The important options for you according to your posted "drive configuration" are:
Select LILO target location - MBR
Confirm location to install LILO - /dev/hda
Select Linux partition - /dev/hdb3
Select DOS/Windows Partition - /dev/hda1

If you've messed up your /etc/lilo.conf file, and need help rewriting it, just post back and ask.

I'm not saying the other gentlemen are incorrect, but this method is the 'Slackware way.' But for sure Slackware does not encourage you to use the Windoze NTLDR bootloader.

Thank you very much, poster above me, that worked like a charm. Only thing left to figure out now is why initlevel 4 killed tty1-tty5 and why my console mouse service is screwing up and not acting as expected at all...

Runlevel 4 always kills TTY1-5 that has been like that for years there is no way I know of to fix it either. you have to go back to runlevel 3 to get that feature back.

LoL no you don't!

edit your /etc/inittab

find these lines


# These are the standard console login getties in multiuser mode:
c1:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty1 linux
c2:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty2 linux
c3:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty3 linux
c4:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty4 linux
c5:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty5 linux
c6:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty6 linux

change whichever tty's you want to load at level 4 for example I have them all loading at all init levels

I forget what the original file looks like, but for example if yours looks like this
c1:1235:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty1 linux
change it to
c1:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty1 linux