cannot install LILO

[Shadowman9876]

I was installing Slackware on an older laptop I got for free and I selected the auto lilo installer and it said it failed. I dont know much about linux. How can I manually install LILO without having to reinstall everything?

 

[puck]

as root:

lilo or /sbin/lilo

depends on the configuration

 

[Shadowman9876]

do this off of the install disc?

 

[Shadowman9876]

i did it off of the install disk 2(rescue disk) and it said it cannot find lilo.conf, do i have to make this?

 

[puck]

hmmmm....try this

boot of the rescue disk,
mkdir /mnt/tux ----- Make directory /mnt/tux
mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/tux ----- mount your root partition as /mnt/tux....hda1 could be different depending on your setup
cat /mnt/tux/etc/lilo.conf ---- see if you get an output of a config file
if you do have a lilo.conf file:
lilo -C /mnt/tux/etc/lilo.conf

should be fixed then. If that doesn't work then I'll see about making one for you.

 

[Nazo]

I read that it was better to chroot to the path you want lilo to install from due to differences in versions and things like that. So, instead you would type "chroot /mnt/tux" or the equivalent, then just type lilo from there. It may not make much difference in practice however.

Anyway, about the lilo.conf. That belongs in /etc as you saw. If you have to manually write your own, try man lilo.conf first to get the basic syntax. It's not quite as complicated as it looks though. Heh, _I_ managed to do it on the second try, so that should tell you something...

 

[puck]

I read that it was better to chroot to the path you want lilo to install from due to differences in versions and things like that. So, instead you would type "chroot /mnt/tux" or the equivalent, then just type lilo from there. It may not make much difference in practice however.

Yeah, I was going to mention doing it that way but figured that would start to get too complicated and I'm not sure of how experienced he is in Linux. I've done it both ways before without any issues.