On Sunday 06 June 2004 16:25, you wrote:
> I have three distributions of Linux on this computer.
> Well, as I'm sure most of you know, Lilo will only one of those
> distributions. Is there a way to make the other two distributions bootable?
It's all a matter of modifying your lilo.conf file in the "/etc" directory
(save the original first) and running "/sbin/lilo" as root.
My main experience is with lilo, but I think grub is even simpler - I just
use lilo out of laziness.
I'm assuming you know in what other two partitions the other two
distributions reside. If not, you can use "cfdisk" to check what partitions
you have (careful not to modify anything unless you really know what you're
doing.) Then compare this against the partitions listed in your "/etc/fstab"
file. If you're lucky, the last-installed distro may have already set up
mount points for the other linux root directories. If not, you'll have to
add them manually to the fstab file. Make sure to create an empty mount
directory for each (for example, /mnt/redhat, /mnt/debian.) The "mount"
command won't do that for you, and will give you a mysterious error if the
directory doesn't exist. I'm assuming here that the "boot" directory is in
the "/" partition for each distro. (Sometimes people put "boot" in a
separate partition, but I prefer to put it in the root partition with
everything else.)
Next you need to mount the root partitions for the other distros, for example:
mount /dev/hda4 /mnt/redhat
mount /dev/hda5 /mnt/debian
Insert the correct values, of course. If the other distros are using lilo,
you can grab the "lilo.conf" files from their "etc" directories. If they're
using grub or something else, you can probably guess what their boot entries
need to look like by copying the entries for the existing distro and making
the necessary changes. You'll have to become superuser and merge the entries
from these in with the "lilo.conf" file in "/etc" on your current distro.
(First back up your original lilo.conf file in case it gets messed up.) Of
course, where paths for the other distros are specified, you have to correct
for where they're actually mounted, e.g., /boot becomes /mnt/redhat/boot.
Usually the beginnings of each lilo.conf files are similar (parameters such
as "lba32"); all you need to merge are the image entries, which are usually
named "linux"; change those to something more specific, such as "redhat" or
"debian."
Sample entry:
image=/boot/vmlinuz -> Change to actual mounted directory.
label=linux -> Change to distro-specific label
root=/dev/hda5 -> Change to actual partition
initrd=/boot/initrd.img -> Change to actual mounted directory.
read-only
Save the modified file and run "lilo -t" as a test. When test mode runs
without complaint, run just plain "lilo" (sometimes you need to say
"/sbin/lilo") which updates the boot menu. It's a bit of a pain, but it
works for me.
Vaughn
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