LILO and MBR

[jon787]

How do you get LILO to start if you don't put it in the MBR?

[ 04 July 2001: Message edited by: jon787 ]

[eperch]

If your using something like PQ's BootMagic, then LILO should go into the Linux root partition. So when you select Linux from a list of OSs, LILO fires up.

[bdl]

Essentially, you use either DOS fdisk or linux fdisk,cfdisk to flip the 'bootable' flag on the partition you want to boot the system. You install LILO to this partition, and so LILO is still your boot manager, just not installed to the MBR.

So for example, I've got a '/boot' partition on my system right up at the front of my main hdd for compatabilities sake, and I install LILO to that partition. My lilo.conf has stanzas to boot windows, freebsd and two versions of the linux kernel.

This obviously has become a hot topic as of late on LNO, although I've yet to see an explanation as to why it's so important. I suppose that allowing change to the MBR can really give opportunity for data loss and should not be done for that reason alone; having said that, I've always installed to the MBR without trouble. YMMV.

[bdg1983]

As bdl says, just set the partition you want to boot as active using fdisk, Partition Magic or similar.