Hi,
I'm currently dual booting -current and XP on my laptop via LILO in the
MBR. The laptop has no floppy drive. I have a 512mb USB key, but the
laptop bios has no options to allow me to boot from it, so I'm guessing
that I can't use it to boot from. My question is: if/when I need to
reinstall XP, which I do fairly regularly (whether I should or should
not be doing this regularly is not the issue), what can I do to get LILO
back into the MBR where it belongs? Am I able to simply boot up with the
Slack installation CD, use it to boot into Slack, then rewrite LILO to
the MBR?
Thanks,
Shannon

Shannon Lloyd wrote:

> Hi,
> I'm currently dual booting -current and XP on my laptop via LILO in the
> MBR. The laptop has no floppy drive. I have a 512mb USB key, but the
> laptop bios has no options to allow me to boot from it, so I'm guessing
> that I can't use it to boot from. My question is: if/when I need to
> reinstall XP, which I do fairly regularly (whether I should or should
> not be doing this regularly is not the issue), what can I do to get LILO
> back into the MBR where it belongs? Am I able to simply boot up with the
> Slack installation CD, use it to boot into Slack, then rewrite LILO to
> the MBR?
> Thanks,
> Shannon

Yes, boot from whatever bootable linux CD (for example the Slackware
installation CD); go into console; mount your root partition; chroot into it
and run lilo (If you have /boot in an other partition than the root one;
you have to mount it also); then exit; umount your partition(s) and reboot

--
Olive

On 2005-01-23, Shannon Lloyd <sjlloydNO@SPAMlikwid.com> wrote:

> I'm currently dual booting -current and XP on my laptop via LILO in the
> MBR. The laptop has no floppy drive. I have a 512mb USB key, but the
> laptop bios has no options to allow me to boot from it, so I'm guessing
> that I can't use it to boot from. My question is: if/when I need to
> reinstall XP, which I do fairly regularly (whether I should or should
> not be doing this regularly is not the issue), what can I do to get LILO
> back into the MBR where it belongs? Am I able to simply boot up with the
> Slack installation CD, use it to boot into Slack, then rewrite LILO to
> the MBR?

Windows 2000 will leave the MBR alone when you do a repair, to
preserve any hard drive managers you may have installed. XP may
have the same behavior. In any case, you can start Slackware from
the installation CD-ROM. The hello message you get when the system
boots from the Slackware CD-ROM tells you how.

Shannon Lloyd wrote:

> Am I able to simply boot up with the
> Slack installation CD, use it to boot into Slack, then rewrite LILO to
> the MBR?

First, XP normally doesn't write to the MBR for a repair. However you
can use the Slack CD as a boot CD and use it to boot whichever
partition Slack is on if XP does the unexpected or stupid since it is a
Microsoft product.

Art Clemons wrote:
> Shannon Lloyd wrote:
>
>
>>Am I able to simply boot up with the
>>Slack installation CD, use it to boot into Slack, then rewrite LILO to
>>the MBR?
>
>
> First, XP normally doesn't write to the MBR for a repair. However you
> can use the Slack CD as a boot CD and use it to boot whichever
> partition Slack is on if XP does the unexpected or stupid since it is a
> Microsoft product.

I probably wasn't specific enough, but I was referring to doing a
complete reinstall of the OS, in which case it does (alas) write over
the MBR. On a slightly (but not really) related note, and at the risk of
becoming somewhat OT for this NG, what if I create an image of my XP
partition once I've got it set up (using Ghost or something similar),
and then instead of reinstalling XP, simply restore the image to the
partition? I would imagine that this would only write into the relevant
partition, avoiding the MBR, yes? Might also help avoid the
all-too-frequent calls to Microsoft to explain why I need to (yet again)
reactivate my copy of XP.

Shannon Lloyd wrote:

> Art Clemons wrote:
>> Shannon Lloyd wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Am I able to simply boot up with the
>>>Slack installation CD, use it to boot into Slack, then rewrite LILO to
>>>the MBR?
>>
>>
>> First, XP normally doesn't write to the MBR for a repair. However you
>> can use the Slack CD as a boot CD and use it to boot whichever
>> partition Slack is on if XP does the unexpected or stupid since it is a
>> Microsoft product.
>
> I probably wasn't specific enough, but I was referring to doing a
> complete reinstall of the OS, in which case it does (alas) write over
> the MBR. On a slightly (but not really) related note, and at the risk of
> becoming somewhat OT for this NG, what if I create an image of my XP
> partition once I've got it set up (using Ghost or something similar),
> and then instead of reinstalling XP, simply restore the image to the
> partition? I would imagine that this would only write into the relevant
> partition, avoiding the MBR, yes? Might also help avoid the
> all-too-frequent calls to Microsoft to explain why I need to (yet again)
> reactivate my copy of XP.

There is a tool to efficiently backup a ntfs partition (ntfsclone; see:
http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/); it will copy only the used part of the
partition in a spare file (I was obliged to to that because I have winXP
preinstalled and only a rescue CD which erase the entire disk).

By the way have you understood how to restore the MBR? this is quite easy.

Boot from any linux bootable CD; then

1) mkdir /slack
2) mount /dev/ha<n> /slack (replace n by the number of your root partition)
3) chroot /slack
Only if you have /boot in another part. than the root one:
3-1) mount /dev/hda<n> /boot (where n is the number of
your /boot partition)
4) lilo
Only if you have /boot in another part. than the root one:
4-1) umount /boot
5) exit
6) umount /slack

(only if you have /boot in another partition than the root one; you have to
do also:

3-1) mount /dev/hda<n> /boot (where n is the number of your /boot partition)
4-1) umount /dev/hda<n>

The same trick can be used to repair a linux system that for whatever reason
you cannot boot anymore; for example to reset a forget root password run
passwd instead of lilo.

Hope that this help,

--
Olive

Shannon Lloyd wrote :

> Am I able to simply boot up with the Slack installation CD, use it to
> boot into Slack, then rewrite LILO to the MBR?

It can be done but there's a easier way out. You can use this command
'mkrescue --iso' it will create a image named "rescue.iso" and if you
burn this image to a CD you'll have a boot-CD just like a boot-floppy.
--
Thomas O.

This area is designed to become quite warm during normal operation.

On 2005-01-24, Shannon Lloyd <sjlloydNO@SPAMlikwid.com> wrote:
> Art Clemons wrote:
>> Shannon Lloyd wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Am I able to simply boot up with the
>>>Slack installation CD, use it to boot into Slack, then rewrite LILO to
>>>the MBR?
>>
>>
>> First, XP normally doesn't write to the MBR for a repair. However you
>> can use the Slack CD as a boot CD and use it to boot whichever
>> partition Slack is on if XP does the unexpected or stupid since it is a
>> Microsoft product.
>
> I probably wasn't specific enough, but I was referring to doing a
> complete reinstall of the OS, in which case it does (alas) write over
> the MBR. On a slightly (but not really) related note, and at the risk of
> becoming somewhat OT for this NG, what if I create an image of my XP
> partition once I've got it set up (using Ghost or something similar),
> and then instead of reinstalling XP, simply restore the image to the
> partition? I would imagine that this would only write into the relevant
> partition, avoiding the MBR, yes? Might also help avoid the
> all-too-frequent calls to Microsoft to explain why I need to (yet again)
> reactivate my copy of XP.

Boot with the Slackware installation CD, and where it stops to ask
you for boot parameters, pass it something like this:

bare.i root=/dev/hda1

Where, of course, 'hda1' is your Linux system's root partition.

(When you boot with the Slack CD, it'll give you instructions for
this when it stops to ask for boot parameters.)