Lilo, two hard drives, Slack, and an XP

**Omnscnt(Sortof)** · 07-04-2005, 01:03 PM

I just re-installed slack and cleaned up a lot cluttered partitions left over from my distrobution experiments. I put slack on all the drive space except for the last 10 gig on the second hard drive where I formatted a fat32 playpen for XP just in case I ever needed it. Lilo would not install during the setup and I realized that I had forgotten to make the first slack and fat partitions bootable. Question 1: I went back to cfdisk in Konsole to fix that, but it looks as though I would have to write over the partition again to make it bootable, can I make it bootable without destroying my new installation?
Second: Windows does not seem to want to install on the second hard disk, is there a way to make it install there without haveing to re-wire my hard drives?(I mean just switch them)
Third: Does lilo not install when nothing is bootable?(I mean, will it install ounce I get it bootable)

I've installed Slackware 10.1 several times now and lilo only has worked on random installations. Sometimes it installs and gives me kernel panic errors, and this time, it didn't install at all. I've been using the boot disk to start it most of the time.

**XiaoKJ** · 07-04-2005, 01:35 PM

really, post your partition scheme, and show us how you use each partition from there.

winxp will not install to the second drive, unless a primary partition is made in the first drive with fat32/ntfs.

however, an easier way is to remove the first hard drive and install, then use lilo and map the winxp drive over.

**Omnscnt(Sortof)** · 07-04-2005, 04:19 PM

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
hda1 Primary Linux swap 49.36
hda2 Primary Linux ReiserFS 39966.64

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
hdb1 Primary Linux swap 16.46
hdb2 Primary Linux ReiserFS 15299.03
hdb3 Primary W95 FAT32 (LBA) 5099.68

That's it but I think I'll try removeing the first hard drive like you said. It's just accidentally overwriting hda2 when I make it bootable that worries me then.

EDIT: Makeing it bootable and writing to the partition didn't destroy it, however, lilo now gives me this dumb error:

root@darkstar:~# lilo
Device 0x0340: Inconsistent partition table, 3rd entry
CHS address in PT: 0:0:0 --> LBA (-1)
LBA address in PT: 0 --> CHS (0:0:1)
Fatal: Either FIX-TABLE or IGNORE-TABLE must be specified
If not sure, first try IGNORE-TABLE (-P ignore)
root@darkstar:~# man lilo
root@darkstar:~# lilo -P ignore
Device 0x0340: Inconsistent partition table, 3rd entry
CHS address in PT: 0:0:0 --> LBA (-1)
LBA address in PT: 0 --> CHS (0:0:1)
The partition table is *NOT* being adjusted.
Fatal: lseek /dev/hdb3: Invalid argument
root@darkstar:~#

**Lucas_Maximus** · 07-04-2005, 09:01 PM

Windows Always like's being at the start of the drive as a rule. I usually put Windows at the start of a drive and then stick all my linux paritions in an extended partition.

However that doesn't help you much at the moment.

**bathory** · 07-05-2005, 04:17 AM

You can have Linux in your primary disk and Windows is your secondary. To do this you must add the option

Code:

map-drive

in your lilo.conf.

Code:

man lilo.conf

for details.

**Omnscnt(Sortof)** · 07-05-2005, 11:01 AM

I installed windows on the second hard drive and worked around a few bizzar glitches in the installation; it tottally reformated the second drive destroying the spare reiserfs partition I had there and replacing what I had with this:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
hdb1 Boot Primary W95 FAT32 2048.10
hdb5 Logical W95 FAT32 18367.06

You can have Linux in your primary disk and Windows is your secondary. To do this you must add the option
Code:

map-drive

in your lilo.conf.

While reading through the man file of lilo.conf, I also noticed that it says that "map-drive" is made obsolete by "boot-as=<bios>". If I use boot-as=, what do I put where the bios is specified and if I use map-drive, where in lilo.conf would I put them?
It gave an syntax error when I put it where I thought logical, though the man page did give an example that included more than just map-drive, so that may have been it.

**psych-major** · 07-05-2005, 12:30 PM

Here's what I did to get my dual-boot setup working...

**Omnscnt(Sortof)** · 07-05-2005, 02:03 PM

I've had a duel boot work before, but I did things so much differently this time. What you did in your feng shui thing was basically what I did the first time I installed linux. This time is different because I installed XP second and the install did some pretty funky stuff. Like it gave me a choice between using the existing partition sceme and customizing the it(re-formatting it). Of coarse, I chose the former since I already set it up in cfdisk but it gave an error somehow related to the partition being too small. I chose the later then and it claimed to let me use the existing sceme even though that was not the option I chose. It went and turned my spare reiserfs into fat32 and the other partition that I set up for it into a logical partition instead of primary.
If I doing the feng shui of duel booting, shouldn't I face north?

**psych-major** · 07-05-2005, 02:56 PM

I was facing west, toward the rocky mountains...
I've done it both ways, and it's really pretty simple either way, but installing Windows first is easier.

One gotcha that trips up a lot of people is the bios, if you have the secondary drive as the bootable drive, with lilo installed to it's mbr, make sure that the bios is trying to boot drive d, rather than drive c. Also, if you have mucked around with several lilo installs, or even a distro that installed grub, then get ahold of a windows 98 boot floppy and run fdisk /mbr. This restores a clean mbr for you to then install lilo to via the Slackware setup.

Anyway, back to installing Windows after Slackware, after you complete the windows install, boot into Linux, run the KDE boot manager (under Control Center...System Administration) and under the operating systems tab, click the probe button. This should locate your Windows installation and add it for you. Click check configuration to make sure it is OK, than apply it. Finally, in a root console, run lilo and then reboot. You should see Windows in your lilo screen now!

**Omnscnt(Sortof)** · 07-05-2005, 06:11 PM

It looked as though it would work, until I rebooted to try it. I probed, applied, and typed lilo and it told me the right stuff but when I rebooted it came up with that windows "use the last safe configuration" menu.

**psych-major** · 07-05-2005, 06:13 PM

This sounds like the PC is booting the drive that does not have lilo installed in it's mbr. Try the bios trick.

**bathory** · 07-06-2005, 03:54 AM

You can use map-drive like this:

Code:

other = /dev/hdb3
  label = windows
  map-drive = 0x80
  to = 0x81
  map-drive = 0x81
  to = 0x80
  table = /dev/hdb

Since my lilo is rather old (22.4.1) and does not have the "boot-as=" option, reading the newer man page I think that you must put the boot-as=0x80 option in the Windows section of lilo.conf

**Omnscnt(Sortof)** · 07-06-2005, 07:56 PM

I thought I'd try wipeing the mbr for a clean start, but I had to get that stupid win98 boot floppy you mentioned and it didn't work. Is there a way I can look at the mbr's directly?

**soulestream** · 07-06-2005, 08:33 PM

you can use your winxp bootdisk to wipe it with

fdisk /mbr

or

fixmbr from recovery console

that will erase the MBR

**psych-major** · 07-07-2005, 10:44 AM

Good call soule, I forgot about the XP option, that will come in handy as newer machines arrive without floppy drives...

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