georgeg4 Posted October 17, 2004 Author Share Posted October 17, 2004 ok heres where i am . i got drake on the boot menu and it does boot up . it comes up with a lot of failures and wont open kppp for some reason so i am going to delete suse's bootloader and "upgrade" drake to fix it and load drakes lilo.conf .because i do want drake as my default . i was just being a stubborn dutchman here and wouldnt let a program ( suse in this case ) beat me so i now have drake and windows in suse's bootloader . note it doesnt have the initrd-2.6.3-7mdk-img line in it that isnt because i left it out it is just because for some reason suse wont include it . i tried several times to add it and it just wont go in thereread-onlypromptboot = /dev/hdaimage = /boot/vmlinuz ###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux### label = Linux initrd = /boot/initrd root = /dev/hda8 append = "resume=/dev/hda6 splash=silent desktop" vga = 0x317image = /boot/Mandrake ###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: Mandrake### label = Mandrake root = /dev/hda5 append = "resume=/dev/hda6 splash=silent desktop"image = /boot/windows ###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: Windows### label = Windows root = /dev/hdaimage = /boot/vmlinuz ###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe### label = Failsafe initrd = /boot/initrd root = /dev/hda8also note the line ###Don't change this comment etc. ###yast puts that line in there by itself Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
striker Posted October 17, 2004 Share Posted October 17, 2004 So you're definitely going to make Drake the default? That would be a very wise decision George, makes it all so much easier. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
georgeg4 Posted October 17, 2004 Author Share Posted October 17, 2004 yep striker like i said i just wasnt going to let it beat me . i wasnt ignoring your and bruno's advice i was just being stubborn .by the way the way i did it was thisfirst log in as root ( for some reason opening yast while logged in as user produced the same result as konsole )while in yast reconfigure lilo ( also it gives an error message the first time so you have to do it twice and the second time just ignore the error message and click finish )then relog in as user and its there Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
striker Posted October 17, 2004 Share Posted October 17, 2004 good thinking George, that's certainly another way to make it behave. But forget Suse now and use Drake. On my machine I use Drake besides all those others and it just lets me do almost everything, incl.the lilo circus. I'm off now for the night, see you tomorrow. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ozidave Posted October 17, 2004 Share Posted October 17, 2004 Hi Fella's,I'm posting this from 'Dual-Boot' with SuSE.I've tested SuSE this morning and everything is 'hunky-dory' though I'm still dual-booting from floppy at this stage... I don't see the transfer to HD as being a problem because all it will do is tell SuSE is to read the loader from somewhere else.I'm also convinced that Mandrake and Suse may work well with 'other' disto's, providing that they are NOT the main Distro trying to boot the another one. SuSE........... Boots Cleanly....... Passed.Mandrake........ Uses 'Other' in the Loader for fd0. I removed that because SuSE doesn't use it. Neither does SuSE Lilo have 'Preload' text to the extent that Mandrake does. And I think that was / is a problem with them because neither one uses the same loading script, and either they will not pass it to each other or it's not compatible to both.So! a few more tests with Mandrake (re the Floppy loader), make sure WIN boots up cleanly and I should be finished.Then I'll compile the syntax, (which George can cut-and-paste and edit) directly into YaST.... etc. and post it. PS: Who do I send the ACCOUNT to, for all of my time and frustration on this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ozidave Posted October 17, 2004 Share Posted October 17, 2004 (edited) So you're definitely going to make Drake the default? That would be a very wise decision George, makes it all so much easier.It doesn't matter which 'Loading' screen anyone uses, one can still set SuSE's Lilo to boot Mandrake as Default. Or Windows for that matter.I prefer SuSE's 'Loader Screen', It's a lot easier to read than Mandrakes'. JMO. But it WOULD be nicer if it was Plain blue or something.... I actually tried to edit it once but was denied access.... So I like Green now. Update:Writing this from Windows......... Booted Cleanly......... Passed. Now on to Drake. :)UPDATE: Everything is ON-and-Booting from Hard-Drive Ok.. But I can't get Mandrake to 'Format' a floppy disk.... YET! (It reads and writes OK)... I thought there may be a problem here, and I'm going to try something. If I can't get it to 'format', I'll post the whole Caboodle and see if you guys can sort out the 'Only' glitch so-far. Edited October 18, 2004 by Ozidave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ozidave Posted October 18, 2004 Share Posted October 18, 2004 (edited) Hi George & Striker & Bruno ,Well! It's all on hard-disk and working fine. I just set YaST boot-config to load Mandrake first and that's exactly what it does. So that's something you won't have to worry about George, when it comes to Preference. The 'format' problem in Mandrake was overcome by replacing the "Title Floppy and configuration" in the loading script. I've re-checked everything that is the norm and can't fault anything; not even the Verbose loading-text gives any anomalies for either Drake or SuSE.So it's finished, and I will post it to a new thread rather than bury it way down in this one, and I'll come back and edit a URL to it. And Yes! I Geeked my way through this when I realised that the LiLo script was so much different for each of them. I don't believe Drake & SuSE will ever 'call' each other because of that difference. They may work fine as orphans under a different parent distro, but not with each other; as each one has already loaded their OWN start script before they get to the other one's 'Title'. SuSE tries to call Drake... Not enough (and wrong) info, Drake calls SuSE... Too much (and wrong) info. Calling either of them using 'Slack etc' should / will work because they are independant of each other. And that's why I thought it was a Bios Loading problem.Anyway! they are all working fine now. If I've missed something, it won't be anything major I think. I also didn't mention I was working with Grub... because I recall reading somewhere the George prefers Lilo. :(Guess what George??.... If you want to run these two and Windows together... you're gonna have to learn to LOVE it. :wub:If it can be made to work with Lilo... I'd love to see it. I've spent about 40 to 50 hrs on this, along with the rest of you.. I'ts time for the White-Flag on Lilo and SuSE-Mandrake to be raised to full mast I think. ;)And now I'm gonna go and get my sense-of-humour back. :url: Mandrake-SuSE-Windows Edited October 18, 2004 by Ozidave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruno Posted October 18, 2004 Share Posted October 18, 2004 Looks good David . . . . I will have to read this again as I come back from work . . . Bruno Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
striker Posted October 18, 2004 Share Posted October 18, 2004 Dave,That's a tremendous job you did there mate ! My compliments for all your efforts and time and persistance : that's very good. Now let's wait for George : he's the one to decide how to go on from this point.But one little remark tho : you can use lilo for that, it simply works, period.Dunno if it works too when using only mandy and suse (nice girls ) and using suse's lilo,I ain't gonna try that. But using a multiboot configuration with mandy's lilo as the bootloader, that definitely works 100 % with all other distros I know, even when the others use grub or potatoes or you name it. Prove of that is on my machine, if necessary I'll post a screenshot of the mandrake lilo or every other screenshot one asks. (no, not that kind of screenshot...linux screenshots only... ) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
teacher Posted October 18, 2004 Share Posted October 18, 2004 Posted this to your other thread rather than this one as I pulled it up first. Decided to cut and paste it here instead to keep your other nice and clean: Looks like a good little tutorial. thumbsup.gif However, I have problems with your first line. If you can't get Suse and Mandrake to work nice together in Lilo, then you are doing something wrong there. I was ignored when I asked to find out why you could not get the Lilo to work and assumed you wanted to work this out on your own. This is a lot more work than adding the Suse lilo info and copying the files over from Suse into Mandrake or adding Mandrake to the Suse lilo.You have put a lot of work into this and I am sure Bruno will look at it to incorporate into a tip for Grub multiboot in the future. The tips are line up in advance and it may take a while but I am sure he will look at it. smile.gifI have been curious about switching to Grub and wondered how much work is involved. As long as my system is perfectly tuned for its bootloader I am not touching it. biggrin.gif I will refer to this though the next time I do a clean install of my hard drives. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ozidave Posted October 18, 2004 Share Posted October 18, 2004 Dunno if it works too when using only Mandy and Suse.Hi Striker, I think the above MAY be the problem... Linux..... I still have Lots and Lots to learn about. But batch files I know a LOT about, and that's how I treated these Lilo config's.When I looked at Mandrake's Lilo, the section from the start to before the first *image=/boot/dev/hda* line.. is a lot different to SuSE, and vice-versa.So I tried Grub to look at how that compiles the loader. They were identical apart from the time and colour syntax and also Mandrake with its extra image-loaders were the same. Not that they are really required in the Grub... but I left them there anyway.I suspect that if the Grub syntax from SuSE was copied to Mandrake's Grub... It would work in reverse, and we could say we were booting from Mandrake, when actually all it is, is using a GUI-Shell, it shouldn't matter what name it's got so long as it does the job.I know SuSE and Mandrake work with other Distro's. Why these distros won't work simply together... I have NO Idea; But at the moment they are working together seamlessly, and I'm going to leave them as they are. Should I install another Distro (HEAVEN FORBID) it takes five minutes to convert them back to Lilo... and new horizons will open up to be tested.Bruno , with his experience may take one look at the Grub config's and say "I can re-write that in Lilo and overcome the Grub alternative".I don't know old mate... I'm not that experienced, but it's working, and that's all that I want. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
striker Posted October 18, 2004 Share Posted October 18, 2004 Teacher Looks like a good little tutorial. thumbsup.gif However, I have problems with your first line. If you can't get Suse and Mandrake to work nice together in Lilo, then you are doing something wrong there. I was ignored when I asked to find out why you could not get the Lilo to work and assumed you wanted to work this out on your own. This is a lot more work than adding the Suse lilo info and copying the files over from Suse into Mandrake or adding Mandrake to the Suse lilo.That's what I keep telling, they can both work ok together in lilo.If they don't, then there must something be wrong. And that's also why Bruno stated to install Mandrake, even if you just use its lilo and partitioning features only.That way things can't get wrong if you play by the rules.But on the other hand, there are things going on in SuSE Personal (not the Pro, it's OK ) which are very weird and not "by the book" , unless it's by SuSE's book.And where one is doing multibooting, it is always being talked about lilo, I can't remember seeing grub being used as the main bootloader in any multiboot configuration, unless I missed something which would be very possible....So why not used the proven set up with lilo, then there would have be no problems at all in the first place. But that's talking afterwards, we all have been very busy in trying to help George, we may have partially succeeded. We all did what was being thought of as best at the moment. I have to admit tho, at the end it got very confusing, what was used as default, which bootloader, which ... what ...So my advice again, keep using lilo as the main bootloader and adapt it to the other distros when multibooting.In my experience that's the one with the minimum pitfalls. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ozidave Posted October 18, 2004 Share Posted October 18, 2004 I was ignored when I asked to find out why you could not get the Lilo to work and assumed you wanted to work this out on your own.Wrong lovely lady, you were working in the background and didn't know about it.You have posted a lot of good information here, and it was only this afternoon that I deleted 'YOUR' Lilo config post from my PC. I've been reading.. rather than asking, because following some of the info posted was easier to sort out and try. However, nothing seemed to work and even the 'Boys' were starting to write in CAPITAL letters.. (or DARK ones anyway) This is a lot more work than adding the Suse lilo info and copying the files over from Suse into Mandrake or adding Mandrake to the Suse lilo.Not really I don't think, if you were already set up using Grub anyway. Take the line below... If I were already using SuSE with Grub, and then Installed Mandrake with Grub and added this line to SuSE's loader, there should be no reason why Mandrake wouldn't boot up or vice-versa. All the other 'titles' I left in the loading script are just there to fill it up. (Toys). Though I believe it needed the fd0 entry for Mandrake's floppy-handler just for formatting floppy disks.title Mandrakekernel (hd0,4)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda5 devfs=mount acpi=ht resume=/dev/hda6 splash=silent vga=788 initrd (hd0,4)/boot/initrd.imgA little bit more typing and more room for errors maybe, but not an over-lengthy procedure, and not that much different from LiLo. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
striker Posted October 18, 2004 Share Posted October 18, 2004 Dave,You did a good job, period. Now let's all wait for Brunos reply.Maybe we all can learn something. (I for one need to get my hands on those Vi-basics , I don't like that "thing" at all, but there's no more Pico in those modern distros, my former workaround for Vi... so I have to go in there and read.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ozidave Posted October 18, 2004 Share Posted October 18, 2004 Let's all wait for Brunos reply.Maybe we all can learn something.Well I'm pleased too. Enough that tomorrow I will no-doubt put SuSE on my other PC also... After I convert Mandrake to Grub, and then try it in reverse. Either way it doesn't really matter, because I still have access to Mandrakes 'tool-kit'.So DON'T go too far away with the Visual Basics!!. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
teacher Posted October 18, 2004 Share Posted October 18, 2004 StrikerIf you don't like the Vi basics then try nano. You would have to install it. I really like Nano better but only use it in Gentoo for some reason. Maybe it is because Nano reminds me of working back in the days of the early 80s where you had these lovely text windows with a few hints along the top and bottom. :)OziThanksYou have made me curious as to the differences between the Pro and Personal on the Suse. I have Pro so would not need to go look at personal. Suse is very different in how it formats its lilo in that it does a lot of commented lines and sections to make it look different.As far as switching the Lilo format from one to the other I don't think it would work because I believe Lilo is actually hard-wired, so to speak, into the configuration of the distro. Sometimes there are Lilo updates, but the dependencies upon other files would make it hard, if not ridiculous, to switch one out of Suse and place in Drake or vice-versa. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
striker Posted October 18, 2004 Share Posted October 18, 2004 teacher If you don't like the Vi basics then try nano. You would have to install it. I really like Nano better but only use it in Gentoo for some reason. Maybe it is because Nano reminds me of working back in the days of the early 80s where you had these lovely text windows with a few hints along the top and bottom.Thanks teacher, I'll try that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
georgeg4 Posted October 18, 2004 Author Share Posted October 18, 2004 striker dave and bruno .sorry i took so long to get back to you all . i have been busy getting all this stuff together . first i want to tell you all how much i appreciate all the work and time you have been putting into this "project " . with that said : there is one thing that kind of got lost in the shuffle and that is i cant boot from floppy for some reason . i change the bios to boot from floppy and it just goes to the hard drive and the default . i have reinstalled/updated drake and i do prefer drake as my default distro . i only had suse as default because that is the way it sets itself up ( or at least till dave's post that is what i thought .) so now i am going to try dave's setup even if it means going to grub (this is if i can get the floppy working but if not i will just copy the files to cd ). i would still prefer lilo though . so in short i can now boot into drake normally with lilo and also i can boot into suse using the repair function on the cd but as you all know that is a roundabout way to boot it .p.s. teacher i was not ignoring you and i am sorry you got that impression . i value your opinions and comments as much or more than others in this forum . george Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
teacher Posted October 18, 2004 Share Posted October 18, 2004 GeorgeThe inability to boot from floppy should always be a bios problem. You might only have two options and thus stick with CD and HD. Otherwise you can set it to FD and CD. Mine reads fist DVD, second HD since I don't have a floppy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
georgeg4 Posted October 18, 2004 Author Share Posted October 18, 2004 Mine reads fist DVD, second HD since I don't have a floppy. wink.gifhow do you get a cd from suse teacher . i can only find the choices of booting from hd and floppy . is there a way to substitute cd for floppy ?and another thing i have is i can write to floppy from the program ( i have a boot floppy for suse but all i can see on it is a folder titled lost and found , which i just assumed was the proggrammers name for it , and it is locked so i cant copy it ) in the meantime i am going to reboot and check my bios settings to see if i can find/fix the problem . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruno Posted October 18, 2004 Share Posted October 18, 2004 Ho . . . ho . . stop . . stop . . . not that fast . . .this is all goiing to fast and getting to complicated :D1) Regarding to David's howto I will reply in the other thread2) I never had any problems using Drake and SUSE ( or any other distro ) in Lilo3) They announced a new version of Grub a while ago, because there were bugs in the present one . . . . I will not do big experiments with Grub before the new version is released.4) There is a Tip about Grub: http://forums.scotsnewsletter.com/index.ph...14&t=503&st=229 and basically if you copy the vmlinuz and initrd.img from the distro you want to add over to the partition you are using the grub from, you can edit the menu.1st easily with any editor that suits you.5) Learning Vi is essential . . . . maybe not when you have a GUI and other tools like kwrite do work . . . but once you are in "desaster-mode" ( without a GUI ) Vi is one of the very few that can save your bu** Bruno Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
georgeg4 Posted October 18, 2004 Author Share Posted October 18, 2004 george stops and takes a deep breath you are absolutely right bruno . i am going to wait till you check out david's idea before i proceed . because as i said i want to keep drake as default as well as lilo .teacher i found the problem it was in the bios as you said . i dont know how it happened but the entry for scanning the floppy at boot was disabled . so even though i chose it in the boot sequence it just skipped over . thanks for that insight . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
teacher Posted October 18, 2004 Share Posted October 18, 2004 Not a problem George. Sometimes we overlook the simple in pursuit of solving the mystery Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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