$200 lindows computer: A caveat on lilo and miscellany on reinstalling

[Leon A. Goldstein]

Joel Hammer wrote:

> Just in case someone else has lindows.
> 1. I noted a while back the my lilo.conf file seemed to change by itself.
> 2. I also hosed by system twice and couldn't run lilo after chroot properly
> after booting up with Knoppix. It complained about a lack of a /dev
> directory and failure to find /dev/hda.
>
> This is the first debian system I have really played with, so I don't
> know if this is lindows or debian but:
>      The lilo program is really a script that calls lilo.real,
>      the actually lilo program. I am not sure what the
>      advantage is of this but the script does checking for
>      /dev and some things I am too lazy to figure out. So,
>      maybe this is why lilo wouldn't work from Knoppix.
>
> Second, there is a binary file, fooze, which seems to have the code that
> regenerates lilo.conf. I haven't found out what calls fooze yet, but,
> I have a feeling that foozes' tenure on my machine is going to be short.
>
> BTW, reinstalling lindows is just too easy. The install disk is done in
> about 5 minutes or so, and then, if you are using the Lindows warehouse,
> you just go there, log in, and you can get a list of all the software you
> had previously installed before you hosed your system. You can quickly
> click on these packages and they are installed in easy debian style while
> you are browsing the internet. (BTW, it seems that the warehouse does
> not check any internal ID on your computer, it justs wants your email
> address and password. This means that you can have a number of lindows
> boxes at home all using the same warehouse subscription. Very nice.)
> Just keep all your data and a few configuration files (like kdmrc and
> Xaccess in my case) in a partition not used by lindows, like a second
> hard drive, and all is well. I'll have to start putting my /home directory
> there, too, if this keeps up.
>

Joel: "fooze" is a heritage from Corel Linux, which had the same nasty
habit.
It periodically scans the installed hardware and rewrites lilo.conf.
This is what CLOS
an unsocial neighbor on a system with multiple Linux distro's, unless
its LILO did the booting.
One of the Corel Linux news group guru's figured out how to neuter
fooze, but said it wasn't worth the bother.
He, and I, have subsequently moved on to better Debians - Storm, and
then Libranet.

--
Leon A. Goldstein

Powered by Libranet 1.9.1 Debian Linux
System 5151


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mail.linux-sxs.org/pipermail/linux-users/attachments/20030422/89c7ff00/attachment.html