Slackware 9.1 Installation questions

R

Roast

Weaksauce
Joined
Dec 31, 2002
Messages
101
Hello,
I am rather new at Linux, so please bear with me. I have used RedHat in the past, and the installation was about as easy as could be. I wanted to tryout Slackware. Here is my problem. I think i got it installed. It will come up to LILO, I can choose the OS, and continue. My problem is, LILO did not find windows on my other harddrive. I had to go into recovery console in XP, use FIXMBR, and then reboot. I can now get into windows, no problem. Slackware, however, is sitting on a partitioned drive, doing nothing. My setup is the primary master drive is all NTFS with XP pro. The 2nd drive (primary slave) is 1/2 FAT32 and 1/2 EXT2. I figure i should probably edit boot.ini to handle the the OS'. Any thoughts?
 
The boot.ini will not help you get back into Linux. I run Gentoo and the only way I would be able to fix that problem, is to reboot off of the Gentoo cd and chroot into my Linux installation and re-setup lilo.

I am not at home right now, so if someone doesn't post a solution, I will see what I can find.
 
Yeah, two choices here- boot off a linux live CD, chroot into slackware's root partition, and reinistall lilo, making sure its config is correct for handling windows.

Or setup windows to handle booting linux. Yes, its possible to make Windows bootloader handfl linux, but not very easy.

Sounds like you're on the right track, so google a bit to find some guiides for what you want to do- an essential linux skill. :)
 
in the future, there is an EASY way to use Windows as your bootmanager and never worry about dealing with a "lost" linux partition again.

When you install your linux bootloader, do not install it to the MBR, rather install it only onto the parition with linux. Reboot the machine to windows and get your hands on "bootpart.exe" from the people who make winimage. http://www.winimage.com/bootpart.htm. Use this utility to extract the boot sector from the linux parition and add it to the windows boot.ini. Easy as pie.
 
Hey,
thanks for eveyone's help here, I eventually found a tutorial that took you through making a copy of what i assume is the linux boot record, putting that on a floppy, then dumping it to c:, and finally editing boot.ini. Works great.
 
UGH.

I did that once...

then I realized that you rewrite the linux boot-sector every time you update lilo (IE - whenever you recompiler your kernel) & have to go throught the whole dance again.


Really, you're much better off using lilo in the MBR. That bootpart.exe sounds interesting as well, if it does what it sounds like it does...
 
amoeba - it definitely doesn exactly what I said. I've used it MANY times. Even after you rewrite the linux boot record ( perhaps during a kernel update), you just reboot into windows and run bootpart again. Literally one command and you're good to go.
 
I just used bootpart on another machine today and it also worked perfect as well. Thank you for the link!
 
i would strongly recommend using grub. It can handle dual booting very easily, you just specify the partition for windows and it will "chainload" to that, making absolutly 0 problems for windows. And you dont have to deal with updating it every time you change anything. Plus, it can display pictures in the background of the boot menu ;)
 
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