mbr and boot question

[Tony Alfrey]

On Wednesday 02 October 2002 08:03 am,Ben Duncan wrote:
> Ohhh .. I get headache just thinking about this one. BE CARFUL !!!

I'm going to.  
<snip>

I have the latest version of LILO, and I can always back up and fix 
LILO from another disk.
My BIOS will let me select any of my disks for booting.

>The version I now have has an lilo entry like such:
>
>disk    = /dev/sda
>   bios  = 0x80
>disk    = /dev/sdb
>  bios  = 0x81
>disk    = /dev/sdc
>  bios  = 0x82
>disk    = /dev/sdd
>   bios  = 0x83
>boot    = /dev/sda1
>read-only
>
>Where the "boot" comand tells WHERE the lilo boot stuff should go.

I believe that this lilo.conf you show above is writing (installing the 
'map') to the boot sector of partition sda1, not the mbr of disk sda.  
I think you must have something in the mbr to start the whole affair.


I think that the gist of what I'm asking is:

"If I write LILO to the mbr of a given disk (and set BIOS to boot that 
disk), will this RETAIN any existing LILO already written to the 
partition boot sectors?"

Thanks!

-- 
Tony Alfrey
tonyalfrey at earthlink.net
"I'd rather be sailing"