[lug] Determining if Lilo or Grub is current bootloader

[Daniel Webb]

On Wed, Jan 17, 2007 at 03:54:58PM -0800, karl horlen wrote:

> I inherited a hd that has both an /etc/lilo.conf and a
> /boot/grub/grub.conf. Each is configured to boot the
> same kernel.
> 
> I can tell that the system is booting from grub versus
> lilo by the initial boot screen that comes up. 
> 
> Is there another way to figure out which bootloader is
> being used other than looking at the initial
> bootscreen?  I know I can just reboot and check the
> screen but I'm just curious if there is some way to
> tell on an existing system without having to reboot.
> 
> I looked through all relevant logs in /var/log and
> none of them seem to refer to 'grub'.  /proc/cmdline
> doesn't offer any help either.  And because both grub
> and lilo configs boot the same kernel and there are no
> differences in with kernel parameters, I can't use
> them to distinguish the boot.  
> 
> I haven't tried booting lilo on this system, but I
> recall that lilo may spit out "Lilo...." in the dmesg
> log file.  So the absence of that line in dmesg may be
> a possible logfile solution.

I think the dd trick is the most likely bet.  

[OT] Is there any need for lilo any more?  Is there anything that lilo can do
that grub can't do better?