[Big-K]

When I installed slackware 10.1, it would not allow me to install lilo(to either mbr or root), so I ended up making a boot disk and have been doing kick boots since. I have accidentally deleted the data on that boot disk. Every time I attempt making a new one from the ones on servers where slackware is available, it fails to boot with it. My best option it seems is to somehow get LILO to work. I have Dam* Small Linux on cd and am using it at the moment(is a live cd distro), so I can access the drive. Every time I try and just boot up straight from the hard drive it just shows up a bunch of 0's 1's an 9's on the screen. I'm sure that is caused by the fact that Slackware is on hda3, and hda1 is my share partition(a vfat one). Since there is nothing on the vfat, and it is hda1, I can't boot straight.

If there's nothing I can do about it, what files would people suggest I keep for configuration purposes to replace originals with after a reinstall?

[codejockey]

You have several options. If you have the installation CD(s) you can boot the first CD (install) and specify your root filesystem to boot Linux. You would use a command such as the following from the boot prompt:

vmlinuz root=/dev/hdc1 ro noinitrd

This should boot you into your Linux installation (assuming your root filesystem is on /dev/hdc1). From there, you can use /sbin/makebootdisk to create a new boot floppy (and a copy, perhaps). I believe the second CD is also bootable as a live Linux installation (it may be the third or fourth CD -- I can't remember for sure). If this works for you, you can then mount your normal root filesystem under (say) /mnt; then mount all of your remaining partitions on /mnt/XXXX, where XXXX is your normal mountpoint (e.g., if you have a separate /tmp filesystem on /dev/hdc4, then you would use the command:

mount /dev/hdc4 /mnt/tmp

after your root partition had been mounted on /mnt.

Then, cd /mnt and give the command:

chroot /mnt

which will effectively make your active installation relative to /mnt instead of /. Then use the /sbin/makebootdisk command to create another boot floppy.

You can also run the script: /var/adm/setup/setup.80.make-bootdisk to re-execute the script that ran during installation.

Hope this helps.

[Big-K]

Yes that will help. I'll print out your instructions tommorrow morning then try it tommorrow afternoon and post back.

Any ideas on getting LILO to work though?

[Big-K]

Alright, fixed it. I typed the stuff to get in with the first disc. It failed to make the bootdisk, but I got into KDE and used KControl to write my LILO settings to hda1 instead.