Trashed my Lilo

[rohandhruva]

Hi,

I dual boot b/w XP HOme on /dev/hda1 and knoppix 3.6 on /dev/hda6 (ext3).

The LILO that comes with knx2hdd with 3.6 version has really bad colors, so i decided to use NTLDR to load linux. i followed the steps correctly, made a bootsect.lnx... and so on. but then i did not add entry to boot.ini as of yet. just then isaw that knoppix include GRUB. so, uninstallinh lilo from /dev/hda6 i did a grub-install. grub just didnt work, it shows a blank screen with no options - i tried changing timeout and everything - to no avail. so know devoid of grub as well as lilo i cannot boot into linux at all. i tried using knoppix cd and chrooting to /dev/hda6 didnt work and running lilo command gave some error about /boot not being writable!! :( i am really screwed. i have bootsect.ln - but its of no use as theres no lilo in /dev/hda6. PLEASE HELP. thankx.
also, as a bonus could someone help me with installing grub too? i will be posting lilo.conf and menu.lst shortly, in about 4 days, as i am not near my computer. which is better - lilo or grub?

rohan.

[Markus]

NTLRD can't boot linux so when you copy the bootsect and add it to boot.ini you get to choose windows or linux in NTLRD, when you choose linux then next thing you see is lilo.
Grub is said to be better, although I use lilo out of habit.

[CrashedAgain]

You should be able to start your Knoppix HD installation by booting from the CD with the following bootcode:
knoppix root=/dev/hda6 noinitrd ro
Then, open a terminal & type 'sudo lilo' to reinstall lilo.

[rohandhruva]

hello,

crashedagain: will try and let u know, as i am away from my computer for 2 days.

markus: for reference its NTLDR, nor NTLRD. :wink: tho it duoesnt matter since linux rocks.

thankx for the help guys.
rohan.

[baldyeti]

If you saved that bootsector (first 512 bytes from your hda6 root FS) and you did not instruct lilo to install to MBR, then you should still be able to add an entry pointing to it in c:\boot.ini, eg "c:\bootsect.lnx="knoppix" under the "[operating systems]" section.

[rohandhruva]

hello,

@baldyeti: i have neither installed lilo to hda(mbr) nor to hda6(linux partition). are u sure it will work, becuase ntldr, as far as i know, doesnt support direct booting into linux kernels? i am not sure, tho i will try! thanks.

rohan.

[baldyeti]

I thought you had initially installed lilo to your root FS ("boot=/dev/hda6" in lilo.conf), copied the resulting boot sector (with "dd if=/dev/hda6 of=bootsect.lnx count=1"), but then that sector got overwritten by your grub install attempt. If that is the case, adding the entry I mentioned before to boot.ini is worth trying. The worst that can happen is that you won't be able to boot knoppix (in which case you will need to install either lilo or grub from CD), but that won't affect windows...