A Helping Hand For Linux Users
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Step-By-Step Guides
This site was created using & is maintained with  Arachnophilia The CareWare editor. Last updated: 22 Nov 1999 |
Booting ANY Operating System Off A Second Hard Drive Using LILO
I apologise if this guide (my first) appears a little rushed. The reason? I
posted a response a question on the mailing list for
Ranish Partition Manager
, a freely available partition/boot manager (a handy little program to have).
The question regarded booting NT off a drive other than the boot drive on a
system with linux installed, something that NT is not designed to do. I
innocently answered that you could do it with nothing but lilo. I was
definately not prepared for the number of responses I recieved. I'm sorry, but
I don't have time to answer everyones request individually, so this page is
probably the
next best thing.
Rooster.
First the disclaimer - I have tested this, used it on several systems with
different distributions & others have done it with no problems following
these
step's. Despite this, I do not claim it will work on every system. You use the
information here at your own risk. I will accept no responsibility for anything
undesirable that may happen as a result of you using this information.
This process assumes you already have linux installed on your system. It will
also work if you install linux after completing step one. In one situation this
was done with C: drive being totally Win98 & a new drive added for NT &
Linux.
To do this, you should complete step one BEFORE installing linux.
Step One
Disconnect your primary hard drive & make the
second drive the new primary master. Alternately, if your BIOS allows you to
set your second (or other) hard drive as the boot device, you can use that
instead, though you will have to start the NT setup from floppies in this
situation. Whichever
method you use, reboot the system & install NT (or any other OS) as normal.
After all the setup is complete, put the drives back in their original order.
If you don't yet have linux installed, do it now.
Step Two
Restart the system & boot into linux.
Change to your /etc directory and open lilo.conf with your favourite editor (I
use kwrite in Xwindows).
If you installed linux after step one, the following MAY have been done
automatically during install, if not you will have to do it yourself. I use
/dev/hdb in this example, but if NT (or other OS) is on another drive, change
it to suit. If an entry the OS on the second drive is not present, add the
following to your lilo.conf
other=/dev/hdb1
The important part here (besides getting the right /dev) is the 2 map-drive
arguments.
BIOS call's to your hard drives use 0x80 for hda, 0x81 for hdb & so on (old
BIOS can only see 2 drives).
What we have done here is swapped the drives, so bios calls for the first hard
drive will be directed to the second hard drive.
What does this mean? When you use lilo to boot an OS on the second drive, it
will
think it is on the first drive.
Step Three
Now save lilo.conf & in an xterm or at the
console, type:
to update lilo with the changes.
Reboot, & if you type nt at the LILO: prompt, it should bring up the NT
Loader. The
only problem you might have is the 1st time you boot NT, it will probably
say something about the paging file. Right click "My Computer", select
properties & go to the performance tab. Click the settings button for the
paging file & set the D: drive paging file min & max to whatever it
recommends (probably 75MB). After its done, it will tell you to reboot, do
that & you shouldn't have any more problems.
I don't really expect too many people to have problems with this, but if you
do, could you please address your questions to the new
PenguinZone Forum
. I, or anyone else who drops in, will try to answer your query as soon as
possible. Currently, the forum is being moved to another (faster) server, &
the messages won't always show up very quickly. Please be patient & resist
reposting again imediately. It will show up eventually.
If you have stayed around long enough to read this, why not join my mailing
list while your here or
sign the guestbook
before you move on. If you like, click the image below & add your favourite
website to the free-for-all links page. I hope you found
this page useful & will have a look around before you leave.
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