[NCLUG] Lilo

[Michael Dwyer]

> I had a dual boot computer using LILO which could boot
> into SuSE 7.1 and also MS Win98.  However, my
> brother-in-law decided to reinstall Win98 and
> inadvertently erased LILO from the mbr. 
> Unfortunately, he also didn't realize that he used the
> same floppy to make a Win98 start-up disk as I had
> used as a boot disk for the dual boot in case anything
> happened to the mbr.  So, now I can no longer access
> my SuSE system.  Is there any way to reinstall LILO on
> the mbr and allowing me to dual boot again?

Look on your SuSE disks for a rescue disk image.  If that
doesn't work there are a number of ways to do this.  Here 
is one way that would work:


Go to ftp.slackware.com and download /bootdisks/bare.i
and /rootdsks.144/color.gz -- probably from the Slack7
distribution.  

Use rawrite to write these two files onto two disks.

(Skip to **HERE** if you know your root partition -- and
 you don't need the color.gz disk, either)

Boot from the first, switch to the second when instructed.

Log into the system as root, then run "fdisk"

use the (p)rint command to view your partition table

Try to figure out which is your root partition -- you
can probably mount and umount them to look around them
if you need to.

run "shutdown -r now"

**HERE**

Put the "bare.i" disk back in the drive.  At the LILO
prompt type "linux root=/dev/hdnn single"  where hdnn
is your / partition.  The kernel will now boot to a
single-user text console.

log in as root and run "lilo -v"

Remove the floppies and run "shutdown -r now"

Things should be happy!