[H-GEN] Boot selector for Debian

Stuart Longland stuartl at longlandclan.hopto.org
Wed May 28 00:22:02 EDT 2003


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Quoting Greg Black <gjb at gbch.net>:

> I have a new DVD in my laptop, so I was able to re-install
> Windows in its little partition (fortunately without blowing
> away my Debian installation on the major part of the disk).

Hrmm, little partition eh?  In Microsoft standards, I'm guessing that's several
GB (5~10GB perhaps) ;-)

> Unfortunately, I'm left without a boot selector.  I can boot
> Windows off the disk; I can boot Debian off a rescue floppy
> telling it to boot from /dev/hda2.  But I really want a little
> thing at boot that offers me a choice of OS to boot....

What loader are you using?  GRUB, LILO or some other bootloader?

If it's LILO, simply edit your /etc/lilo.conf file to include the Windoze
partition and enter 'lilo' at the prompt should get you back up and running again.

If it's GRUB, edit your /boot/grub/menu.lst to include your Windoze partition, then:

1. Start the GRUB shell: 'grub'
2. Set root device:
   > root G_DEVICE
   where G_DEVICE is the Grub device name, e.g. (hd0,0) for first partition...
3. Install the boot sector:
   > setup (hd0)

That should (I hope) work.

> I'd be most grateful for a
> clue so that I don't have to keep booting from floppy ...

Well, you have to think about it from Micro$oft's prospective, Windows is so
great, why would you want to use anything else??  Now you see why their
installation tools try to replace the master boot record. ;-)

+-------------------------------------------------------------+
| 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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