converting to grub from lilo [DrDos on hdc1 not booting]

[Joe(theWordy)Philbrook]

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It would appear that on May 24, Michael did say:

> > If I'm right, it will get more confusing if/when computers have more
> > than 2 primary ide ports as I think grub's notation will number ALL the
> > master drives before any of the slaves...
> > 
> Grub just seems annoying, needlessly, complex to use. What's the problem with
> LILO that keeps it from not even being an option in FC2? After installing I
> had to go through and manually fix Grub's settings because it was trying to
> incorrectly boot an old Linux off a different drive in my computer. I've
> always found Grub to be more effort for the same bang unless you're trying to
> do something fancy where you need it's flexibility.


Well I'll not argue too much there... While I can't claim to be an
"EXPERT" lilo user, I've managed to keep it booting win98se and up to 5
different linux installations ever since before I ever played with anything even
remotely redhat... 

My method was simple: Let the distro's installer install to the
partition superblock (or whatever non-mbr choice was offered) so that it
would make a lilo.conf with the settings that distro liked. Into this
I would copy the lilo.conf from an existing distro, edit the new entry
as needed to reflect kernel and initrd image filenames that identified
the distro [ making sure to copy the images to their new filenames ;) ]
Then I would test it with lilo -b /dev/fd0
IF that worked properly I'd lilo -b /dev/hda

And I liked it that way...

BUT

When I started to play with redhat (RH9) I found that I couldn't use
my favorite lilo menu form with the version of lilo that shipped on it.

that is:

=> install=menu
=> menu-scheme=wb:bw:wb:bw

I simply cannot abide the very gui looking boot appearance that RH9
pushed on me. And with fedora I can't even get past the format that
requires me to type the label of the boot instruction I want to use...

Yeah if I was a real lilo expert I could probably beat that without 
having to use the lilo from one of my non-redhat installations
(currently that means Mandrake 9.1) for the boot loader I actually put in
the mbr. But like I said, I'm not a lilo expert. 

This was fine for RH9, ( I spent more time with mdk9.1 then with RH9
anyway ) But when I heard about fedora, I liked the idea. And soon found
that aside from the lilo issue, I actually LIKE it better than the other
distros, I almost never boot anything else anymore. So I want my primary 
boot set-up file to reside in a fedora distro. And fedora is pushing
grub. So I want to learn to work with grub. And I find the default dark
blue background and the default font of the boot menu screen that FC2's
grub presented me with to be enough like plain text that I don't mind
it's appearance.

When I'm at least as comfortable editing my grub.conf as I am with one
of my lilo.conf files. AND when I'm as comfortable with doing
whatever the grub equivalents are of: 

lilo -b /dev/fd0
&
lilo -b /dev/hda

( yes I know I don't have to do this every time I edit the grub.conf, But
I need to know I can easily make full menu access start from a floppy,
AND put what ever grub does save in the mbr back if something trashes
it....)

Then once I'm comfortable with my ability to do all that without having to
ask for help anymore. And if I still prefer the appearance of the old
lilo menu. And assuming I still have an installed distro with a lilo that
will use:

=> install=menu
=> menu-scheme=wb:bw:wb:bw

Then I'll probably boot that distro and put lilo back on the mbr...

Right now, I just want DrDos to boot with grub, so that I can feel Ok
about using it as my primary bootloader until/unless all the above
described circumstances become true at the same time.

- - -- 
|				      ---   ---
|     Joe (theWordy) Philbrook	      <o>   <o>
|	   J(tWdy)P			  ^
|	<<jtwdyp at ttlc.net>>		/---\	"bla bla bla..."
|					\___/	"...and bla..."

   At least I know my mouth is running, I just can't find the off button!


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