Datasheet
“main” (Installation and Administration) — 2004/6/25 — 13:29 — page 217 — #243
i
i
i
i
i
i
i
i
8
Booting and Boot Managers
The following locations are suitable for storing the LILO boot sector:
On a Floppy Disk This is the simplest, but also the slowest method for
booting with LILO. Choose this alternative if you do not want to
change the existing boot sector.
In the Boot Sector of a Primary Linux Partition on the First Hard Disk
This leaves the MBR untouched. Before it can be booted, the partition
must be marked active. Start fdisk as root with the command fdisk
-s hpartitioni. The program asks for a command. Obtain a list of
the available commands by entering m. The a command can be used
to mark a partition as active.
In the Master Boot Record This variation offers the highest flexibility. It
is the only possible alternative if all the Linux partitions reside on the
second hard disk and there is no extended partition on the first drive.
Every setting of the MBR must be edited with extreme care because
errors may have severe consequences.
In a Boot Sector Booted by Another Boot Manager
Try this if you are using another boot manager and want to continue
using it. Depending on its flexibility and power, there are several
variations. A common case: you have a primary Linux partition
on the second hard disk from which to boot Linux. If your boot
manager is able to boot this partition through its boot sector, you may
install LILO into this boot sector then tell your boot manager that the
partition is active.
8.5.1 Configuring LILO
LILO is a flexible boot manager that offers many ways of adapting a con-
figuration to your needs. The most important options and meanings are
described below. For more detail, look at [4].
The configuration of LILO is stored in the file /etc/lilo.conf. Always
make a backup of the last working lilo.conf file before changing it. Any
changes in this file take effect only when reinstalling LILO — after running
the lilo command against the changed /etc/lilo.conf file. For de-
tails, refer to Section 8.5.3 on page 221.
217SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server