"Boot Loader" control panel broken (Mandrake 10.1)

[Guest smileyhamster]

I've just installed Mandrake 10.1 with all the available updates. I installed the boot loader on the floppy drive because if the distro I installed failed for some reason I can just remove the floppy and boot into my previous working OS.

 

Anyway, everything boots up fine and everything seems to work great. However, I noticed that the only options I had in my lilo boot menu was "Linux" and "Windows". The lack of the "failsafe" option could cause trouble if I messed up my graphics display for example. Any reason why this wasn't there because Mdk10 had it?

 

I went into the Mandrake Control Center->Boot->Boot Loader and the disk I booted with that's still in the drive makes a reading noise. Then the LILO options appear but "Enable ACPI" is on when I remember turning it off. I click "Next" and the list of boot menu entries is empty (there should be two). When I click finish, I get a message saying "Installation of bootloader fail. The following error occurred: Syntax error".

 

The log window says:

"22:44:11 drakboot[5854]: renamed file /etc/lilo.conf to /etc/lilo.conf.old "

 

The new lilo.conf file is:

"# File generated by DrakX/drakboot

# WARNING: do not forget to run lilo after modifying this file

 

boot=/dev/fd0

message=/boot/message

menu-scheme=wb:bw:wb:bw

=

label=""

"

 

Since this isn't written to disk anyway, the boot disk still works on reboot. What's going on? Does anybody know why it isn't working and what I can do to find out?

 

If I edit "/etc/lilo.conf" manually and run the "lilo" command, the new lilo file is written correctly and I get the new options I added on reboot. The GUI wizard is still broken though.

 

I thought it might be the disk that's faulty, but I don't know how to make a new boot disk. I can't find a wizard for one and none of the boot disk tutorials I've found on the internet work. Most of them start with running the command "fdformat /dev/fd0h1440" but the only device I have like this is called "/dev/fd0" so it doesn't work.

 

Thanks.

 

[moved from Software by spinynorman]

[aRTee]

I have no clue as to why your lilo file seems to get newly created by the graphical tool.

 

Do you now have the right options on your bootfloppy?

 

To make a bootdisk, just insert an empty floppy in the drive and make sure that at the top the 'boot' line says this:

boot=/dev/fd0

basically, this means that the bootloader should be placed on the bootsector (making it bootable) of the floppy disk.

 

What other questions do you have? I admit I can't make out what your exact problem is and where you need help..