I need some help from LILO expert

[garyng]

If I have the linux/knoppix installed on a secondary harddisk, or anything disk other than hda(say hdc1), how should I setup the lilo.conf ?

I have googled and read all those howto's but most of them assume linux is on hda.

How should I specify the "boot=" option as well as the "image=", "root=" and "initrd=" options ? I tried to find out how lilo works but none of the lilo howto's mention it and the man page of lilo.conf is too confusing for me on this regard.

thanks for any help in advance.

[VeeDubb]

Well, it may be a little "below" your level, but like I tell everyone else that has trouble with lilo, try GAG. It's mind numbingly simple and I've yet to find a way to configure it wrong, even with things on multiple drives.

[edit]
Please post a link to the software you refer to in your post it makes it easier for people to find what you are refering too. You can get GAG here[/edit]

[garyng]

no it is not below my level, just not suitable

I need to play with lilo for the sole reason that I don't want to touch floppy(I know it is actually easier and less dangerous to play with floppy).

Another reason with lilo is that I can't spare a seperate linux partition(which I guess is a must for GAG) meaning I am playing with the same /dev/hda1 boot sector that is shared with my XP.

I know I can have lilo at the MBR and chain boot into the XP bootloader but my family members would be scared away for that mysterious lilo prompt, they prefer the XP boot prompt

[Stephen]

I think you want the -b option to install to a partition on hd?.
ie. /sbin/lilo -b /dev/hd? - where ? = partition number where you want to install the bootloader. If you just specify hdb then it puts it on the MBR of hdb instead of a partition.

Then use XP bootloader to boot to that partition.

[rickenbacherus]

Every Linux partition you want to boot must have LILO installed to it. Additionally you can edit your lilo.conf and tell it which parittion to install to. GAG (just like any boot manager) will simply point to the partition you want to boot but if your family prefers the XP bootloader then no GAG won't work for you.

So here's what happens in chain booting: You boot your boot manager (whichever one you use) - you get a selection menu, when you choose to boot "OS Whatever" you're really just pointing to a bootable partition which also has a boot loader in it. So you activate the boot loader in that partition which then proceeds to boot your OS. Effectually you use a boot loader twice when you multi-boot.

BTW- GAG doesn't need its own partition, it installs in the outer edge of the disk just like any other boot manager including ntloader but GAG gives you a nice looking menu, nicer than LILO nicer than NTLDR fer sure!

Does XP have a new bootloader or is MS still using NTLDR? IF you absolutely MUST have the XP bootloader then install LILO to your Linux partition and edit the XP boot loader to point to it. How? - Sorry but I have no idea. I too have family that has yet to give up windows but fortunately they don't do it on my machine!