I installed Win2k Pro first on one partition then SW 9.1 on another
partition. Both partitions were listed as bootable in cfdisk, but when I
rebooted after install I got "invalid partition". When I changed the SW
partition to non-bootable it booted straight to Win2k. I know when I
installed SW 9.1 that it asked me if I wanted to install the boot loader in
MBR, Floppy or the SW partition. I told it the SW partition, but that
obviously didn't work.
Can someone help?
Carlton.

Carlton Whitmore wrote:

> I installed Win2k Pro first on one partition then SW 9.1 on another
> partition. Both partitions were listed as bootable in cfdisk, but when
> I rebooted after install I got "invalid partition". When I changed the
> SW partition to non-bootable it booted straight to Win2k. I know when
> I installed SW 9.1 that it asked me if I wanted to install the boot
> loader in MBR, Floppy or the SW partition. I told it the SW partition,
> but that obviously didn't work.
> Can someone help?
> Carlton.

You can install LILO on the MBR and select to boot Win or Slack.Â*Â*OrÂ*do
as I did.

Install Slack's LILO on /boot partition (or / if you didn't create
seperate partitions). My laptop Slack boot partition is hda2.
Then follow ->Â*Â*http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Linux+NT-Loader-5.html

Always make a bootable disk.

--
robert - redhat & slackware

Carlton Whitmore wrote:

> I know when I
> installed SW 9.1 that it asked me if I wanted to install the boot loader in
> MBR, Floppy or the SW partition. I told it the SW partition, but that
> obviously didn't work.

Are you sure? the booting sequence on ANY IBM compatible system goes
like this: BIOS executes POST, transfers activity to the info stored in
MBR, this one calls either a menu with choices or if this is absent the
first OS that wrote its booting script in MBR.
So if you wrote Linux booting info on partition it is there but nothing
calls it.
Boot from installation CD, one of first screens gives you choices to
activate your install. When in, as root, instruct lilo to write booting
info in mbr. Later edit /etc/lilo.conf to give you the choices of
installed OS's and rerun lilo.
"man lilo" and "man lilo.conf" helps a lot in this work.

> Can someone help?
> Carlton.
>
>
HTH

Stanislaw.
Slack user from Ulladulla.

When I'm setting up the partitions in cfdisk do I setup the linux partition
to be "bootable"? I noticed that the Windows partition is already setup that
way.

"reh" <someone@somewhere.com> wrote in message
news:5IpGb.141$Cw5.65@newsread1.news.atl.earthlink .net...
> Carlton Whitmore wrote:
>
> > I installed Win2k Pro first on one partition then SW 9.1 on another
> > partition. Both partitions were listed as bootable in cfdisk, but when
> > I rebooted after install I got "invalid partition". When I changed the
> > SW partition to non-bootable it booted straight to Win2k. I know when
> > I installed SW 9.1 that it asked me if I wanted to install the boot
> > loader in MBR, Floppy or the SW partition. I told it the SW partition,
> > but that obviously didn't work.
> > Can someone help?
> > Carlton.
>
> You can install LILO on the MBR and select to boot Win or Slack. Or do
> as I did.
>
> Install Slack's LILO on /boot partition (or / if you didn't create
> seperate partitions). My laptop Slack boot partition is hda2.
> Then follow -> http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Linux+NT-Loader-5.html
>
> Always make a bootable disk.
>
> --
> robert - redhat & slackware
>

Carlton Whitmore wrote:

> I installed Win2k Pro first on one partition then SW 9.1 on another
> partition. Both partitions were listed as bootable in cfdisk, but when I
> rebooted after install I got "invalid partition". When I changed the SW
> partition to non-bootable it booted straight to Win2k. I know when I
> installed SW 9.1 that it asked me if I wanted to install the boot loader
> in MBR, Floppy or the SW partition. I told it the SW partition, but that
> obviously didn't work.

Slightly off-topic, but I've found this quite useful

edit /etc/lilo.conf
change "boot = /dev/hda" to "boot = /dev/fd0"
load a floppy, run lilo
change lilo.conf back and run lilo again

This gives you a fast boot-off-floppy as the kernel that is loaded comes
from your hard drive rather than floppy disk (as happens with mkrescue -
keep an mkrescue floppy as well).

Nice to have if Windows hijacks your MBR. Also, my son runs XP 95% of the
time so rather than go through lilo every time, he just pushes the linux
boot floppy in and powers up. If your PC does a floppy seek anyway, it is
just as fast as booting from hard drive.

--
Paul

Carlton Whitmore wrote:

> When I'm setting up the partitions in cfdisk do I setup the linux
> partition to be "bootable"? I noticed that the Windows partition is
> already setup that way.
>

Probably the hardest thing to grasp is there are many, many ways to
accomplish the same thing.

If you do the setup like I said, the Windows partition need to be
bootable. That is why you make a 512 byte image of the SW boot
partition and copy it to C:\, and add it to the boot.ini file.

On the other hand, if the SW partition is bootable, you will need to add
the Windows partition information to the lilo.conf.

Think of it like this. Depends what partition is bootable.

Windows: you will need the 512byte file from the SW partition added to
the boot.ini file to 'jump' to the the SW partition to continue
booting.
SW: you will need to add the Windows partition to the lilo.conf to
'jump' to the Windows partition.

For reasons that may confuse you now, I setup my dual boot boxes as I
mentioned. Windows is the boot partition and add the 512byte image
from the Slack / partition.

--
robert - redhat & slackware

reh wrote:

> Carlton Whitmore wrote:
>
>> When I'm setting up the partitions in cfdisk do I setup the linux
>> partition to be "bootable"? I noticed that the Windows partition is
>> already setup that way.
>>
>
> Probably the hardest thing to grasp is there are many, many ways to
> accomplish the same thing.
>
> If you do the setup like I said, the Windows partition need to be
> bootable. That is why you make a 512 byte image of the SW boot
> partition and copy it to C:\, and add it to the boot.ini file.
>
> On the other hand, if the SW partition is bootable, you will need to
> add the Windows partition information to the lilo.conf.
>
> Think of it like this. Depends what partition is bootable.
>
> Windows: you will need the 512byte file from the SW partition added
> to the boot.ini file to 'jump' to the the SW partition to continue
> booting.
> SW: you will need to add the Windows partition to the lilo.conf to
> 'jump' to the Windows partition.
>
> For reasons that may confuse you now, I setup my dual boot boxes as I
> mentioned. Windows is the boot partition and add the 512byte image
> from the Slack / partition.
>

opps, forgot to add that you can install LILO on the MBR and boot
Windows and Slack. See, there are many ways and most folks find what
works best for them and just stay with it.

--
robert - redhat & slackware

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reh <someone@somewhere.com> wrote:

> Windows: you will need the 512byte file from the SW partition
> added to the boot.ini file to 'jump' to the the SW partition to
> continue booting.

For various reasons I gave up posting extensive help to AOLS a long
time ago. But in the inebriated spirit of Christmas here's a run-
through of what's actually involved in reh's statement.

Assuming a dual boot with either NT, W2K or WXP (9x doesn't use
boot.ini):

Ensure that lilo has been installed to the PARTITION and NOT to the
MBR. This run-through will NOT work with the latter. If you've
already installed to the MBR, use either "lilo -u" under Linux or
"fdisk /mbr" under Windows to restore it to its original condition.

As root, at the Slackware command prompt:

# dd if=/dev/hda2 of=slakboot.sla bs=512 count=1

Replace /dev/hda2 in this example with the partition containing the
/boot directory of your Slackware installation.

If using a FAT Windows filesystem, you can mount the C:\ drive and
copy the slakboot.sla file directly. Assuming Windows is on the
(typical) /dev/hda1 partition:

# mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/hd
# cp slakboot.sla /mnt/hd
# umount /mnt/hd

If you are using NTFS, DON'T do it this way. NTFS write support
under Linux remains flaky at best. Instead, insert a floppy, and
(if mtools are installed):

# mcopy slakboot.sla a:

If no mtools are installed, instead do the following:

# mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy
# cp slakboot.sla /mnt/floppy
# umount /mnt/floppy

Reboot, log into Windows as Administrator and copy the slakboot.sla
file from floppy to your drive. This file contains Linux partition
information. For simplicity, I'll assume that the file is copied
to the root C:\ directory. Add the following line to C:\boot.ini:

C:\slakboot.sla ="Slackware Linux 9.1"

And that's it. Season's greetings and all that.

- --
George Georgakis-geeg AT tripleg net au-http://www.tripleg.net.au/
SlackBuild Central - http://slackpack.tripleg.net.au/

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George Georgakis wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> reh <someone@somewhere.com> wrote:
>
>> Windows: you will need the 512byte file from the SW partition
>> added to the boot.ini file to 'jump' to the the SW partition to
>> continue booting.
>
> For various reasons I gave up posting extensive help to AOLS a long
> time ago. But in the inebriated spirit of Christmas here's a run-
> through of what's actually involved in reh's statement.
>
> Assuming a dual boot with either NT, W2K or WXP (9x doesn't use
> boot.ini):
>
> Ensure that lilo has been installed to the PARTITION and NOT to the
> MBR. This run-through will NOT work with the latter. If you've
> already installed to the MBR, use either "lilo -u" under Linux or
> "fdisk /mbr" under Windows to restore it to its original condition.
>
> As root, at the Slackware command prompt:
>
> # dd if=/dev/hda2 of=slakboot.sla bs=512 count=1
>
> Replace /dev/hda2 in this example with the partition containing the
> /boot directory of your Slackware installation.
>
> If using a FAT Windows filesystem, you can mount the C:\ drive and
> copy the slakboot.sla file directly. Assuming Windows is on the
> (typical) /dev/hda1 partition:
>
> # mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/hd
> # cp slakboot.sla /mnt/hd
> # umount /mnt/hd
>
> If you are using NTFS, DON'T do it this way. NTFS write support
> under Linux remains flaky at best. Instead, insert a floppy, and
> (if mtools are installed):
>
> # mcopy slakboot.sla a:
>
> If no mtools are installed, instead do the following:
>
> # mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy
> # cp slakboot.sla /mnt/floppy
> # umount /mnt/floppy
>
> Reboot, log into Windows as Administrator and copy the slakboot.sla
> file from floppy to your drive. This file contains Linux partition
> information. For simplicity, I'll assume that the file is copied
> to the root C:\ directory. Add the following line to C:\boot.ini:
>
> C:\slakboot.sla ="Slackware Linux 9.1"
>
> And that's it. Season's greetings and all that.
>
> - --
> George Georgakis-geeg AT tripleg net au-http://www.tripleg.net.au/
> SlackBuild Central - http://slackpack.tripleg.net.au/
>

Excellent walk through. Where where you many years ago when I needed
this!

--
robert - redhat & slackware

>
> Nice to have if Windows hijacks your MBR. Also, my son runs XP 95% of the
> time so rather than go through lilo every time, he just pushes the linux
> boot floppy in and powers up. If your PC does a floppy seek anyway, it is
> just as fast as booting from hard drive.


I tried to load LILO on MBR many times..each time when I booted my
system after I ran liloconfig,the error at boot was Invalid partition
table.I just found out the solution..The thing is my windows resides
on /dev/hdd1 and Slackware on /dev/hdd3..I ran cfdisk and realised
that Till today the windows partition was made bootable and the
Slackware Partition wasn't..So..I now marked the bootable flag on for
the Slackware partition and removed the tag for the windows one..Now
the LILO is working fine..