Question:
The installation went fine, but when I tried to write the LILO information to the MBR, I got a vague error that said the installation program could not write this info to the MBR. What should I do?
Answer:
The MBR may be locked. You need to access your system's BIOS and verify that the MBR is not write-protected. Also, double-check that you do not have a virus scan enabled in the BIOS that may interfere with writing to the MBR. Depending on the system, you may already have another boot loader in the MBR that conflicts with LILO.
Once you have enabled the ability to write to your MBR, follow these steps to install LILO there:
Boot your system into Linux. (If your system cannot boot into Linux from the hard drive, boot using your boot floppy. Then, at the boot prompt, type vmlinuz root=/dev/hda5 at the LILO: prompt or the location of your Linux root partition.)
Once your system is finished booting, login as root and check your /etc/lilo.conf file to make sure everything is correct. Here is an example lilo.conf file:
boot=/dev/hda map=/boot/map install=/boot/boot.b prompt timeout=50 message=/boot/message linear default=linux image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.2.17-14 label=linux initrd=/boot/initrd-2.2.17-14.img read-only root=/dev/hda5 image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.2.16-22enterprise label=linux-2.2.16-22 initrd=/boot/initrd-2.2.16-22.img read-only root=/dev/hda5 |
Type man lilo.conf for more information about configuring /etc/lilo.conf.
Once you are sure that /etc/lilo.conf is properly configured, run /sbin/lilo -v -v. If you receive any errors, stop and verify that your lilo.conf file is correctly configured. If the lilo command works correctly, type shutdown -r now to reboot your system.
These steps should install LILO to your MBR properly and allow you to boot without using a boot disk.
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Question:
I have installed Linux to dual boot with Windows. My first drive, /dev/hda is Linux, and my second drive is my Windows drive. Windows worked fine until after I installed Linux. Now, when I select "dos" from the LILO: prompt to boot to Windows, all I get is "Starting...." and then my machine locks, up. My entry for Windows in my /etc/lilo.conf file looks like this:
other=/dev/hdb1
label=dos
table=/dev/hdb |
Why is this happening and how can I work around it?
Answer:
Windows is expecting to be the first disk in your computer and does not know what to do when you try to boot it as the second drive. In order to work around this, you must modify your /etc/lilo.conf file so that the entry for Windows looks like this:
other=/dev/hdb1
label=dos
table=/dev/hdb
map-drive = 0x80
to = 0x81
map-drive = 0x81
to = 0x80 |
Once you have done this, you must re-run LILO so that your changes take effect. To do this, type /sbin/lilo -v -v.
What this does is fool DOS/Windows into believing that it is the first drive in your system.
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Question:
When my machine boots, all it says is 'LI' and then it freezes. What is the problem?
Answer:
This means that LILO (the Linux bootloader) is having problems bootstrapping itself to the system. There are a couple of possible situations that may be causing this:
You may have installed LILO above the 1024th cylinder on your hard drive. The kernel needs to reside entirely below the 1023rd cylinder on the drive. If this is the case, you need to create a /boot partition that resides in these limits and reinstall LILO.
You may also need to go into your system's BIOS and make certain that LBA mode is enabled. If LBA was off, you will need to repartition and reinstall.
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Question:
When do I need to use loadlin?
Answer:
You will need an alternative to LILO if you can not install the Linux kernel to where the BIOS can reach it or you do not wish to use it. The BIOS may not be able to reach it for one of the following reasons:
The kernel is above the 1023 cylinder of the hard drive.
The kernel is on a drive the BIOS cannot boot to (not on Primary IDE or SCSI chain).
Other esoteric kernel/BIOS problems.
You have hardware that can only be initialized in DOS (Plug and Play, etc).
You will probably need to use the Loadlin boot loader that is provided on the CD-ROM in \dosutils. You will need to copy this directory over to your DOS hard drive partition and edit the autoboot.bat file to point to its new position and removing the initrd= line. If your system is a SCSI system, you will need to go into rescue mode and copy the /mnt/boot/initrd.img from the hard drive over to the DOS partition, and use it for booting.
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Question:
I installed LILO fine and can boot to either OS. How can I change the default OS that it boots to?
Answer:
For newer versions of Red Hat Linux, /etc/lilo.conf accepts a default= line that specifies the label of the image section that will be used to boot the machine by default. So, for example, a /etc/lilo.conf file may look like this:
boot=/dev/hda map=/boot/map install=/boot/boot.b prompt timeout=50 message=/boot/message linear default=linux image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.2.17-14 label=linux initrd=/boot/initrd-2.2.17-14.img read-only root=/dev/hda5 image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.2.16-22 label=linux-old initrd=/boot/initrd-2.2.16-22.img read-only root=/dev/hda5 |
The default= line points to the label=linux as the default image to use when booting the system.
To change the default image to use when booting, simply change the default= line to point to the correct label value (in this example, linux-old). Save /etc/lilo.conf and run the lilo -v -v command to save the change.
For older Red Hat Linux systems, you will also need to edit the /etc/lilo.conf file. However, since these versions cannot specify a default= line, you will need to change the order of the operating systems that LILO sees in its configuration file. In other words, you will need to place the lines that point to the operating system you would like to boot by default ahead of the others.
In the following example we change the order of booting so that DOS gets booted by default instead of Linux:
pico /etc/lilo.conf |
Here is the old version:
boot=/dev/hda map=/boot/map install=/boot/boot.b prompt timeout=50 image=/boot/vmlinux-2.2.12-20 label=linux root=/dev/hda2 read-only other = /dev/hda1 label = dos table = /dev/hda |
You would then change it to the following:
boot=/dev/hda map=/boot/map install=/boot/boot.b prompt timeout=50 other = /dev/hda1 label = dos table = /dev/hda image=/boot/vmlinux-2.2.12-20 label=linux root=/dev/hda2 read-only |
Save your changes to the file. At the shell prompt, run the command /sbin/lilo -v and the updated LILO will be written to the boot device. On reboot, the machine will now boot into DOS by default instead of Linux.
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Question:
How can I remove the LILO information from my Master Boot Record (MBR)?
Answer:
There are several methods to removing LILO from the Master Boot Record of the machine. Inside of Linux, you can replace the MBR with an earlier saved version of the MBR using the /sbin/lilo command:
/sbin/lilo -u |
In DOS, NT, and Windows 95 you can use the fdisk command to create a new MBR with the "undocumented" flag /mbr. This will rewrite the MBR to only boot the primary DOS partition:
fdisk /mbr |