Re: newbie questions

["James R. Van Zandt" <jrv vanzandt mv com>]

Some further details on Cris' questions:

You can configure lilo to boot your choice of operating system.
Here's my /etc/lilo.conf:

boot=/dev/sda
root=/dev/sdb2
# Generated by liloconfig
compact
install=/boot/boot.b
map=/boot/map
vga=normal
prompt
timeout=50
delay=50
image=/boot/bzImage-2.2.5-1999-07-26
  label=Linux
  read-only
image=/boot/bzImage-2.2.5-1999-04-08
  label=Linux-2.2.5
  read-only
image=/var/boot/bzImage-2.1.132
  label=Linux-2.1.132
  read-only
image=/var/boot/vmlinuz
  label=Linux-2.1.125
  read-only
image=/var/boot/vmlinuz-2.0.29
  label=Linux.old
  read-only
image=/var/boot/vmlinuz
  label="Red Hat"
  root=/dev/sdc5
  read-only
other=/dev/sda1
  label=DOS

The last two lines will boot Windows from /dev/sda1 (the first
partition on the first SCSI disk) if the user types "dos" at the
prompt.  The default (nothing typed after 5 seconds) is to boot the
kernel /boot/bzImage-2.2.5-1999-07-26.  

Here's another tip from Chris Foote <cabot ee mcgill ca>:

"One of the things LILO can do, is print a customized message before
giving the prompt (that is the "boot" prompt, not the "LILO"
prompt). Just put a line in your lilo.conf that looks like:

message = /boot/message

and put your customized message in /boot/message. The interesting
thing is that if that file contains an ASCII 7 character (control-G),
you will here a short beep when the message is actually printed by
LILO. So when you hear that beep, you know you can release the shift
key and type in your command line."


An incorrect lilo installation can make your machine unbootable.  For
a safer method, you may want to check out loadlin.  It's a DOS program
that boots Linux.  That requires no changes in your boot sector.  I
use a batch file like this to boot Linux on another computer:

@echo off
cd c:\ut\loadlin
loadlin kernels/2-0-27/zImage root=/dev/hda6 ro

Here, 
loadlin.exe is the DOS program that starts Linux,
"kernels/2-0-27/zImage" is a path to a copy of the Linux kernel.  (Hmm
- I need to install a newer kernel, don't I?)  
"root=/dev/hda6" specifies the root partition
"ro" tells the kernel to mount the root partition read-only, so it can
run fsck.  It remounts it read-write later in the boot process.

			- Jim Van Zandt