booting up..

[x3r0n]

hi everyone. heres the scoop. i am a windows user for 6 years and i know nothing of linux. i recently reformatted and installed redhat linux. but i cannot get it to startup withouth teh boot disk that it had me create. is there a way to start it up without a boot disk? do i have to format my hard-drive in a specific way? please help. thanks.

[Yvraine]

(Caveat: I am at work, not at my Linux box, which is running Debian anyway, and my memory might be hazy.)

It may be as simple as telling the machine that it's supposed to boot from the hard drive. In the BIOS you can set the order of the disks it tries to boot from; mine is set to Floppy then CD-ROM then Hard Drive.

Also, it's been a bit since I installed, but I believe there was an option to make Linux bootable from the hard drive. Obviously if you don't choose that option then the box won't boot from that drive. The Red Hat installation may be different, never tried it.

My $.02, hope that helps.

[fancypiper]

There are several Linux loaders. I think the boot disk (at least mine does) uses lilo (Linux Loader). You can also use loadlin, grub and possibly others. Read the documentation for your loader choice.

To use lilo, log in as root and edit the file /etc/lilo.conf. Here is mine for an example (I dual boot):


# Lilo Configuration file: /etc/lilo.conf
boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
prompt
timeout=50
default=windows
lba32

image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.2.14-5.0
label=linux
read-only
root=/dev/hda4
append="hdd=ide-scsi" # scsi emulation

other=/dev/hda1
label=windows


You can probably use the file or get the info you need from your boot disk.

After editing the file for your box, save it, then command /sbin/lilo.

After setting up your loader of choice, you should be able to load the OS from the hard drive.