capnkirby Posted December 3, 2003 Report Share Posted December 3, 2003 I currently have Mepis on my second drive I use for playing with other distros, my problem is I cannot get either disros boot loader to get the other to boot! I had the same issue with Libranet as well, but not with other non-debian based distros. I have tried both Grub and Lilo, auto and manually(to the best of my ability) and still get no where. Under Lilo configured by Mandrake I get a kernel panic after a few moments of loading, under grub by Mandrake, I get an error that claims it is an invalid format, unable to read. When using Mepis's bootloader (grub I believe) it states Loading and just sits there waiting for god knows what. I've taken to switching first boot in the motherboards bios to go between the two, not a wholly desirable arrangement! What am I missing!!!!! Thanks, Capn Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted December 4, 2003 Report Share Posted December 4, 2003 Would you post the contents of your /etc/lilo.conf? Also, what is the content of your primary /boot? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mdg Posted December 4, 2003 Report Share Posted December 4, 2003 As far as I know, you should only have one bootloader installed and configure it to load the second/third distro. I don't think two bootloaders will work together Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted December 4, 2003 Report Share Posted December 4, 2003 As in my sig, I am currently booting 3 different os's, two of them linux flavors. I am using one lilo.conf file, and have the necessary files in the Mandrake /boot, which is the primary boot distro. That's why I need to see the lilo.conf and the /boot folder. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cannonfodder Posted December 4, 2003 Report Share Posted December 4, 2003 Here's a MUB faq I wrote a while back. might help.. http://www.mandrakeusers.org/index.php?showtopic=6389 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
capnkirby Posted December 4, 2003 Author Report Share Posted December 4, 2003 (edited) Lilo.conf: boot=/dev/hda vga=normal default="linux" keytable=/boot/us.klt prompt nowarn timeout=100 message=/boot/message menu-scheme=wb:bw:wb:bw image=/boot/vmlinuz label="linux" root=/dev/hda1 initrd=/boot/initrd.img append="devfs=mount acpi=ht splash=silent" vga=788 read-only image=/boot/vmlinuz label="linux-nonfb" root=/dev/hda1 initrd=/boot/initrd.img append="devfs=mount acpi=ht" read-only image=/boot/vmlinuz label="failsafe" root=/dev/hda1 initrd=/boot/initrd.img append="failsafe devfs=nomount acpi=ht" read-only other=/dev/hdb3 label="Mepis" table=/dev/hdb map-drive=0x80 to=0x81 map-drive=0x81 to=0x80 The Mepis boot is currently showing hdb3, which is what appears to be the root directory, however, it doesn't matter what I point it to, I continue to get the same results. (this is from Mandrakes config using the System Configuration tool). MDG, I had each distro install create thier own boot loader on hda1 and than configured it once booted. Currently, each has it's own boot loader on it's own drive so I can boot in by switching the boot order in the bios. Thanks, Capn Edited December 4, 2003 by capnkirby Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cannonfodder Posted December 4, 2003 Report Share Posted December 4, 2003 How about your /etc/fstab file? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
capnkirby Posted December 4, 2003 Author Report Share Posted December 4, 2003 /etc/fstab /dev/hda1 / ext3 defaults 1 1 none /dev/pts devpts mode=0620 0 0 /dev/hda6 /home ext3 defaults 1 2 none /mnt/cdrom supermount dev=/dev/hdc,fs=udf:iso9660,ro,--,iocharset=iso8859-1 0 0 none /mnt/hd supermount dev=/dev/hdb1,fs=xfs,--,iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,notail,kudzu 0 0 none /proc proc defaults 0 0 /dev/hda5 swap swap defaults 0 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cannonfodder Posted December 4, 2003 Report Share Posted December 4, 2003 Ok, your problem is that you are not defining the mephis partition in your mandrake boot manager. Here's what you do.. make a mephis entry defining /dev/hdb3 so it mounts. rerun lilo as root Linux lilo requires the altern linux distro's root partition to be defined so it can find the vmlinuz file. Read the faq link I sent you for more info.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted December 4, 2003 Report Share Posted December 4, 2003 Maybe I'm doing this wrong, but I copy the image file into my /boot directory, specifiy the files in lilo, and tell where the /boot is. If the kernel requires a map or other item, I place it in the /boot directory and stipulate that in lilo as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cannonfodder Posted December 4, 2003 Report Share Posted December 4, 2003 It may be based on the distro. When I wrote the faq I was supporting two mandrake versions.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
capnkirby Posted December 5, 2003 Author Report Share Posted December 5, 2003 Finally got it THANKS!! I really want to be able to give Mepis a good once over, but I refuse to lose Mandrake in the process! It took a bit of both ideas, I had to bring the image in and than let Mandrake know about it, incorporating some of the configuration from Mepis's lilo.confg to get it to play. I really don't think that Mandrake wants to play with Mepis(or maybe debian), I cannot view the second drive, it shows on my desktop, but I cannot browse it at all. While this is not an issue in any way, just curious...... Thanks again! Capn Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted December 5, 2003 Report Share Posted December 5, 2003 I always use sort of two steps with my other os's. One is to get my one lilo configuration to boot it. The second is to mount the drives in my fstab so that I can browse them. I think that cannon and I are actually describing the same process, but my vocabulary is not as good! I make mount points in /mnt (MEPIS_root and MEPIS_home) and then I add the drives in fstab. The only time I get into trouble is when I change a distro, change the file system type, and forget to remove it from my fstab before I mess with things! I was really locked out of Mandrake, and I discovered that the MEPIS rescue is a fully functioning desktop!! Pretty cool! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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