[SOLVED]Need to change to LILO

[dedeaux]

OK, I do know there are resources in the Gentoo handbook on how to use LILO at install time, however I need to switch from GRUB to LILO.

My situation is this. I installed Sabayon 3.4e onto my laptop. This particular laptop, like others, has an issue with GRUB which causes the DVD/CD drive to disappear (meaning gone, not there). Dual booting with XP as well the DVD/CD is missing.

The only solution at this time is to install LILO. I had run Ubuntu for a short while with the same issues which were resolved with LILO.

So, can someone help me install and configure LILO? I recall having to revert back to an older format of the /etc/fstab as the current format uses UUIDs instead of the normal /dev/hdx, etc. I can't seem to find a good guide to make the switch after a successful install of GRUB.

[DontPanic]

The Gentoo Handbook chapter on Configuring the Bootloader has a decent, short description on lilo (as well as grub). It's short, but there's not much to lilo.

On a side note, check how your partitions are named, they make be designated as sdx# instead of hdx# (depending, it seems, on how your kernel is built).

As far as UUIDs go, you may not need to fix that, but it probably wouldn't hurt anything to change to the sdx#/hdx# format either.

[dedeaux]

Thanks for the reply.

Here is what my current /etc/fstab looks like:

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/dev/disk/by-uuid/3a8df4db-cf49-4ee3-8c2f-ede0c8267b1f /  ext3    user_xattr      1 1
/dev/disk/by-uuid/607bc9b4-1b23-4822-b55f-fbc0be841c96 /home  ext3    user_xattr      1 2
/dev/shm                /dev/shm                tmpfs   defaults        0 0
/dev/disk/by-uuid/c995c8fb-dabf-4a77-af44-ca54ada65b3e swap  swap    defaults        0 0


Any suggestions on how to change that to become more LILO friendly would be helpful.

[DontPanic]

I've used lilo for years, and just now started using grub. But I've never used UUID in my fstab until Sabayon-3.4e, and now I'm using grub. So I've never actually tried this myself.

Actually, I don't think lilo will care what your fstab looks like. The kernel handles that latter in the boot process.

But it would be good to be ready. Make sure and identify which actual device each UUID points to:

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ls -Fla /dev/disk/by-uuid/

If you want, you could replace each UUID in your fstab by the corresponding /dev/sdx# or /dev/hdx#. Personally, I would leave the fstab as is, and see if it works, making sure I have the information to edit fstab if that is really necessary (you can do this by booting with your Sabayon-Linux DVD if booting fails)

However, your lilo.conf file will need the root partition (the partation mounted at /) identified by sdx#/hdx#.

[dedeaux]

Thanks DontPanic... I was able to switch to LILO w/o having to touch my /etc/fstab.

Life is good now. My internal DVD-RW has come back to life and I am happy.

Thanks again for the help.