[H-GEN] Lilo v Grub

[Stuart Longland]

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Alan H wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> I am a Linux Newbie, so please be gentle ...
> I have (had) RH8 installed on a new Hard disk - I believe it used Lilo as
> it's loader. It booted perfectly.
Actually, no, Red Hat Linux 8.0 uses GRUB by default (I think this can
be changed when installing though)

>
> I have tried to install Mandrake.
> It  installed OK - but it would not boot!

Okay, can you provide more detail?
  + Partition Tables
  + Errors when booting
  + Your /boot/grub/menu.lst file?

> Now I have installed Lycoris, and it won't boot either.
> It just gets to what looks like a Grub command prompt.

I can't comment here because I've had no experience with Lycoris.  It's
a more commercial distro from what I've heard.  Try getting onto the
tech support at Lycoris and see what they say.

> I have Knoppix on a CD - it boots perfectly & I can see the files on the
> Hard Drive.

Great, this will be very useful indeed for debugging.  You should be
able to mount your Linux ROOT partition in Knoppix and correct the
problem.  To mount a filesystem:  (for example on /hd)

1. Make sure the mountpoint directory exists:
# mkdir /hd
   If this returns an error saying the directory already exists - that's
good.  If it returns nothing, that's fine also.  If it returns something
else, this is a problem.

2. Mount your device on /hd (or whatever directory you chose)
# mount /dev/<PARTITION> /hd

where <PARTITION> is the Linux Root partition containing your Linux
installation.  One easy way of finding this is to type fdisk
/dev/<DEVICE> (where <DEVICE> is the drive you installed to, either hda,
hdb, hdc, hdd or sda, sdb... It'll probably be hda) and typing p.
You'll see a list of all the partitions on your machine, one will have
the filesystem type 0x83 or Linux.  This is the one you want to mount.

Hope this helps.

+-------------------------------------------------------------+
| Stuart Longland           stuartl at longlandclan.hopto.org |
| Brisbane Mesh Node: 719             http://stuartl.cjb.net/ |
| I haven't lost my mind - it's backed up on a tape somewhere |
| Griffith Student No:           Course: Bachelor/IT @ Nathan |
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