Replacing GRUB with LILO

[retired1af]

I've run into a bit of an issue, and I'm not even sure if I want to do this.

I installed Slackware64 13.1 last night, and thought it would be an easy thing to just run grub-mkconfig to add it to my existing GRUB menu. Lo and behold, it doesn't detect the Slackware installation. Attempts to manually add the entry results in all sorts of fun things, including partition not found (yeah, right) to a runaway loop modprobe error (that one was interesting!).  A bit of searching gives varying opinions regard Slack and GRUB. After fighting with GRUB most of this morning, I thought screw it, and I'll go back to LILO.

Fired up VASM and ran the LILO option. Rebooted and still had GRUB. Niiiiiice, says I. Now what? lilo -v results in the following:

LILO version 22.8, Copyright (C) 1992-1998 Werner Almesberger
Development beyond version 21 Copyright (C) 1999-2006 John Coffman
Released 19-Feb-2007 and compiled at 02:39:03 on Apr  1 2008.

Warning: LBA32 addressing assumed
Reading boot sector from /dev/sdb1
Warning: /dev/sdb1 is not on the first disk
Warning: Unable to determine video adapter in use in the present system.
Using BITMAP secondary loader
Calling map_insert_data
Mapping bitmap file /boot/bitmap/boot.bmp -> back.bmp
Warning: Video adapter does not support VESA BIOS extensions needed for
  display of 256 colors.  Boot loader will fall back to TEXT only operation.
Calling map_insert_file

Boot image: /boot/vmlinuz -> vmlinuz-2.6.31.11
Added linux *

Boot image: /boot/vmlinuz -> vmlinuz-2.6.31.11
Added linux-tui

Boot image: /boot/vmlinuz -> vmlinuz-2.6.31.11
Added linux-gui

Boot image: /boot/tamu/vmlinuz-slackware-sdb5
Added slackware-sdb5

Writing boot sector.
/boot/boot.0811 exists - no boot sector backup copy made.
4 warnings were issued.

You'd think that would do the trick, right? Reboot and guess what I see? It sure isn't a LILO menu!

Here's the entry I added to GRUB. It doesn't work either.

menuentry "Slackware 13.1" {
        insmod ext2
        set root=(hd1,5)
        linux /boot/vmlinuz-generic-2.6.33.4 root=/dev/sdb5 ro nosplash rootdelay=10 vga 791
        initrd /boot/initrd
}

So I'm kinda stumped here. Short of the drastic "screw this and nuke the #$)(*@&# drive", I'm open to suggestions on how to get either to work.

[uelsk8s]

run "vliloconf-fixmbr"
choose the ms-sys option the choose the drive and finally write a zero mbr.
from there you should be able to install lilo

[newt]

I don't know the exact setup your after but it sure seems that lilo is installing itself to your /dev/sdb1 partition, rather than the primary hard drive location for your system (e.g. /dev/sda or /dev/sdb)

Reading boot sector from /dev/sdb1
Warning: /dev/sdb1 is not on the first disk

You may want to have a look at your lilo.conf file and adjust the installation location to your primary hard drive (assuming that's what you want).

[retired1af]

No no no no no.. Primary hard drive can not be touched. It should write to the MBR of SDB rather than SDA. Windows is on the primary drive. The external drive (SDB1) is the Linux drive. I have the notebook set to boot from the external if it's plugged in, and if it isn't, it defaults to the internal hard drive and boots windows.

[newt]

Fine, but you're still attempting to install lilo to the first PARTITION (sdb1) on your external device (sdb).  Thus, the only way you'll ever access that lilo installation is via a chainload.