by : Everything else seems to go well, until the very last step. I just cannot
: get LILO to install properly. It gives me an error message and lets me keep
: retying, but to no avail.
First, make sure to fix your MBR which can normally be done with DOS Fdisk
and "fdisk /mbr".
Welcome to the Bad BIOS Club! There is a solution. Install again, but this
time, make a small DOS partition that is the primary and is bootable.
Partition the rest to taste for Linux. Install normally until the LILO
part. When you get to that part, make the LILO floppy, then SHUT THE
COMPUTER OFF!!!!! Note that the next time you boot after that wanton
killing of the computer, you may have a *ed up the filesystem. In any
case, Linux will run fsck to fix it if it can.
With the LILO floppy, boot. On the CD you will find DOS utilities. Get a
DOS boot floppy and put Loadlin on it with a copy of your kernel. On the
DOS boot floppy, you will need a zero-byte CONFIG.SYS, FORMAT.COM,
EDIT.COM LOADLIN.EXE, and the kernel.
Now, with this DOS boot disk, slip it into the floppy drive and boot. Upon
booting, format /s that DOS partition. Then copy the files from the DOS
boot disk onto the hard drive. Next, using the editor, make an
AUTOEXEC.BAT with this line:
loadlin vmlinuz root=/dev/hda5 ro
Of course, for the Linux root partition, use your exact partition and to
use the filename with the kernel. The above is my standard Loadlin setup
line. Now, with this ready, hit CTRL-ALT-DELETE and watch as your
Loadlin-booted Linux box comes to life!
My normal procedure for partitioning a hard drive is for the first
partition to be a primary, partition 4 is the extended and all subsequent
partitions logical drives. Using Loadlin, this has always worked. It's
most likely not critical to do it this way. Rather, it's just my habit. :)
During the install, you can opt to mount the Loadlin partition or not. I
choose to mount it on /lightoff or on dual-boot boxes as /dos. I also
habitually make one small ext2 partition to mount under /the/x/files. You
can partition to your liking, of course. :)
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