lilo vs grub

[Robert L Cochran]

Over the years I've found the wisest course is to try to master as many 
tools as possible. By preferring one tool over another, you close off 
future opportunities.

Sometimes, reading tutorials is well worth it.

I can do both lilo and grub. Grub happens to be a lot more flexible, but 
I can go back to lilo if need be.

You don't want to spend your whole day managing bootloaders. You want to 
do better things. 30 seconds after you boot the kernel, you won't care a 
whit what bootloader you are using.

Bob



Jim Cornette wrote:
> Samuel Flory wrote:
> 
>> Mark Mielke wrote:
>>
>>> On Sun, Oct 19, 2003 at 10:54:42PM -0400, Jim Cornette wrote:
>>>
>>>> I think that LILO and GRUB should both be included in the 
>>>> distribution. An important utility like a boot loader should have a 
>>>> backup version. I needed lilo to restore my ability to boot when I 
>>>> changed drives on the primary master.
>>>> Grub failed on an intermediate stage and I would have not been able 
>>>> to boot my system successfully without having lilo.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Why didn't you have a backup grub partition? You didn't need lilo to 
>>> boot.
>>> You happened to have lilo. Note the difference. Also, grub can be put
>>> stand-alone on a floppy that allows you to re-install grub without 
>>> booting
>>> the system up. Lilo gives you nothing of this.
> 
> 
> 
> In my situation, I removed the hard drive from a 166 MHz computer and 
> added it to a newly bought computer. (800 MHz) There was nothing but 
> WinME on the newly bought machine. This disc was the secondary drive 
> from the other machine
> 
> I knew how to work with LILO from prior work with the program. I don't 
> really know how to work with grub, except for editing the grub.conf file.
> 
> I think I tried grub-install qnd only got a grub prompt on /dev/hda. I 
> booted up from a floppy disk and then just edited lilo.conf, ran it, 
> then waited until I wiped out /dev/hda for winME and grub took over 
> since then.
> 
>>>
>>>
>>>> If it is a better choice for the eyes free mode for users. It makes 
>>>> even more sense to start including it again.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Why is it a better choice? Why does it make even more sense to start
>>> including again?
>>
>>
>>
>>   Because lilo works on some configs that grub does not work on.  I 
>> have  at least 2 systems that will not boot with grub.  I've 
>> encountered instances with friends where grub-install to reinstall 
>> grub on to the mbr.
>>
>>>
>>> I find lilo to be dangerous - if you don't run lilo after moving the 
>>> kernel
>>> image, or installation a new kernel image, you are dead. Grub gives you
>>> several different options to work from.
> 
> 
> They didn't work from reading the info and me trying to follow the 
> instructions. I'm still not sure how grub switches from one boot 
> partition to the other.
> 
> A fresh install on /dev/hda resulted in grub booting from /dev/hda. A 
> fresh install on /dev/hdb made grub work from /dev/hdb again.
> 
>>>
>>
>>   Actually your system will boot just fine if the filesystem hasn't 
>> reclaimed the space used by the file;-)  Person I like the fact that I 
>> have to run lilo.  It's a great sanity check.  With grub you really 
>> can't be sure your system will be able to reboot.
> 
> 
> 
> I agree, when you run lilo you know that what you ran and lilo verified 
> is what was entered into the loader.
> 
>>
>>
>>> I see no reason why lilo should continue to be developed, or why it 
>>> should
>>> be re-included into fedora or redhat.
> 
> 
> What harm is it to give people choices as to what programs or utilities 
> they should run? It is better to allow more choices, instead of cutting 
> out tools available.
> 
>>> Cheers,
>>> mark
>>>
>>
>>
> 
> 

-- 
Bob Cochran
Greenbelt, Maryland, USA
http://greenbeltcomputer.biz/