LILO vs NT OSLoader

[SalTaylor]

Having a few problems configuring a suitable bootmenu for a Linux/NT/98 dualboot drive. LILO will not install to the MBR and I've tried putting it on the first sector of its partition to no avail. My partitions look like this in cfdisk:

hda1 Bootable Primary FAT16 [Win98] 2144.38MB
hda5 Logical NTFS [WinNT] 2144.38MB
hda6 Logical FAT16 [Data1] 2144.38MB
hda7 Logical FAT32 [Data2} 5535.13MB
hda4 Primary Linux ext2 [/] 7927.24MB
hda3 Primary Linux swap 123.87MB

I created dos partitions in MSDOS and Linux from Linux installation program. The OS's went on this order: Win98>WinNT>Linux

Linux installation on hda4 will only boot from Linux bootdisk. NT OSLoader4 works fine and produces a menu allowing boot from NT4 and win98 partitions. However, I cannot get Linux to boot from OSLoader

I tried installing Linux to bootsector of hda4 and creating an image of the partition and placing it on my boot partition but no luck: # dd if=/dev/hda4 of=/mnt/win98/bootsect.lnx bs=512 count=1, then in BOOT.INI: C:\bootsect.lnx="Linux". I even tried using the BOOTPART util in NT4:> Bootpart 8 bootsect.lnx Linux. (Nothing worked)

I tried installing LILO directly to the MBR but NT's OSLoader4 comes out on top.


I am ready and willing to reinstall Linux (RH7.0 by the way) or WinNT4 if that can solve the problem. What am I doing wrong ?.

Help !

[Gaccm]

what happens when you run /sbin/lilo? if you change your /etc/lilo.conf file, you need to rerun lilo. I know that you could use the 9x loader, but make the linux partition active (using fdisk in dos) and then 9x would boot lilo, which could then boot everything.

[Molecule Man]

http://www.linux.org/docs/ldp/howto/mini/Linux+NT-Loader.html

[augur]

Greetings,

What whould happen if you did: dd if=/dev/fda of=/mnt/win98/bootsect.lnx bs=512 count=1, since it boots from the floopy just fine...
Never tried it, but i'm curious to see if it would work.

[ph34r]

Do the dd stuff -

dd if=/dev/fda of=/mnt/win98/bootsect.lnx bs=512 count=1

And put the bootsect.lnx file where NT can see it, and make a entry in boot.ini to point to it. All covered in the howto link a few posts up...

[The King Ant]

You sure you had everything set correctly when you tried to put lilo in the MBR? You had a "boot=/dev/hda" line in your lilo.conf file? If that was there, and you ran /sbin/lilo, and your BIOS was set to boot from drive C, there is no way that the NT bootloader should come up first (unless you have an incredibly funky BIOS).

Er, I recommend using LILO, by the way. I find that it's easier to manage. The NT bootloader will just kinda sit in hda1, and LILO will just kinda sit in the MBR of hda. So LILO runs, if you choose Linux, then it boots from your /boot partition (or just / if you don't have a /boot). If you choose NT, then the bootload passes control to the NT loader that's in hda1 and it boots NT.