[lug] Windoze/Linux and no lilo

[Bear Giles]

> A friend just asked me how to get lilo working on a system that had
> Windows and he installed RH as a dual boot. Somehow lilo isn't being
> recognized on boot, it's booting straight into Windows.

Windows is notorious for installing its own bootloader.  The
residential class OSes are also notorious for interpreting
non-Windows partitions as "unused" partitions that should be
formatted for use by Windows, since otherwise the space is
going to waste.

That's why I (and many others) have strict policies that Windows
must have its own disk, and it must be the only disk in the system
when updating the Windows OS.  The disk is temporarily the master 
on that IDE channel.

But in practice that disk is made the secondary disk on the IDE
channel, and the LILO config swaps /dev/hda and /dev/hdb before
handing off control.  That makes Windows think that it's on
drive C: and it seems to be unable to see the Linux disks.

Some people manage to run with dual-boot systems on a single disk,
but I've seen too many Linux installations go *poof* to be comfortable
with that.

> Anyone know how to do this? I've run into this on a new system, a year
> ago, and I reinstalled both OSes. Is there a way to force lilo on boot?

Reinstall LILO, and never reinstall Windows without a rescue disk
handy because Windows WILL reinstall its own boot loader.

Bear