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Installing a second distribution


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I have 2 hard drives, one dual booting XP and Mandy and another that I will try to get Gentoo installed. (it's a USB device)

If I succeed in getting Gentoo installed, how do I go about enabling it to be shown in lilo, so that I can get logged? Is there any tutorial covering this issue? Please, let me know.

Thanks.

 

edited to change top descrip.

Edited by william
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Well...I've followed the instructions comprised on the gentoo handbook and after 2 nights trying to get it installed on my second HD (sda), following the instruction of its handbook, I think I got it successfuly installed. The only and maybe the major problem is that I can't see any file in neither /boot nor /. Of couse I'm running mandrake as root, but these dirs are empty??!! and it will be impossible to point /mnt/gentoo/boot/vmlinux if there's no file there!!

As additional information, gentoo installation was as follows:

1) Using latest gentoo live CD
2) Ext3 filesystem for all partitions
3) Stage3
4) Latest portage version
5) USE="-gtk -gnome qt kde dvd alsa cdr (the same suggested in the tutoriall)
6) gentoo-dev-sources kernel
7) genkernel to get it compiled
8) LILO as the bootloader (I got an error message saying that sda was not the first disk, after lilo command in the terminal)

I won't give up to get it installed here and indeed cannon's tutorial will be great, but where's initrd.img in my gentoo mounted partition?

Thank you all guys.

 

edite to correct: /mnt/gentoo/boot/vmlinux, instead initrd.img

Edited by william
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:bvc: = distro ho

 

 

:D

 

 

William, if gentoo is your 3rd distro in the chain, i would'nt think you need to install lilo/grub. If mdk was your main booter than you would just add the /gentoo/kernel * initrd (were ever those are) to your mdks lilo/grub.

 

Does mdk see your sda drive?

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Indeed, mandy recognizes my second HD. I've added the root partion to fstab and got it mounted. The issue is that (maybe I misunderstood cannon's tutorial) when I add:

image=/mnt/gentoo/boot/vmlinux to mdk's  lilo.conf and run lilo I got an error message saying the vmlinux was not found, of course the dir is empty!!!

That's the problem here...Even having installed a bootloader on my second hd (what is completely unnecessary), some files should be there in /gentoo/boot dir, isn't it?

Thanks for your input cybrjackle.

Edited by william
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figured out where vmlinux is (/mnt/gentoo/usr/src/linux-2.6.5-gentoo-r1/vmlinux) and has symlinked to /mnt/gentoo/boot and after lilo command I got:

[root@poseidon william]# lilo
Added failsafe
Added windows
Added floppy
Added Linux_263-14 *
Fatal: Kernel /mnt/gentoo/boot/vmlinux is too big

Sorry if I'm being stupid in doint that, but what is going wrong here?

Here is my mkd lilo.conf (mandy is controlling lilo)

# File generated by DrakX/drakboot
# WARNING: do not forget to run lilo after modifying this file

boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/map
default="Linux_263-14"
keytable=/boot/us.klt
prompt
nowarn
timeout=200
message=/boot/message
menu-scheme=wb:bw:wb:bw
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="failsafe"
root=/dev/hda5
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="failsafe acpi=ht resume=/dev/sda5 devfs=nomount"
read-only
other=/dev/hda1
label="windows"
table=/dev/hda
other=/dev/fd0
label="floppy"
unsafe
image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.3-14mdk
label="Linux_263-14"
root=/dev/hda5
initrd=/boot/initrd-2.6.3-14mdk.img
vga=794
read-only
image=/mnt/gentoo/boot/vmlinux
label=gentoo
read-only
root=/dev/sda3
initrd=/boot/initrd-2.6.3-14mdk.img

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is it;

vmlinux

or

vmlinuz

???

 

If it is infact vmlinux then copy the actual image (vmlinux-x.x.x) not the symlink (vmlinux) to mandrakes /boot

I believe lilo requires it in the /boot on the distro lilo resides, and the distro the kernel image is for. At least when I used lilo it's the only way it worked. Grub doesn't need that or to be ran after a config change :P

Edited by bvc
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