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Getting Lilo Back

Hi,

A while ago I had to reinstall XP which I have duel booting with Mandrake 9. In doing this it got rid of Lilo. So I can't access Linux. Any idea how I can get it back up without reinstalling? Thanks

-Sam

haydes007

If you made a Linux boot floppy you can boot from it. When you get to a login prompt, login as root then run the following command:

/sbin/lilo -v

This will reinstall LILO with the last settings you had. I assume that since you only reinstalled XP that those settings should work fine.

If you don't have a boot floppy, you should be able to boot your system from the mandrake install DISC. At the boot: prompt, type the following:

linux root=/dev/pathToYourLinuxPartition noinitrd ro

When you get back in, login ad root and run /sbin/lilo -v

This *SHOULD* fix your problem.

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manuelflury

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dhaberx

You need to boot off some other linux media. Usually boot/rescue disks will allow you to choose a partitiion to mount. At the lilo prompt it's something like "root=/dev/hda1".

I would highly reccomend Timos RescueCD. It's a small debian based CD that will provide enough documentation to boot off your hard drive. Once on log on as root and then run /sbin/lilo .

Timos RescueCD is available at:
http://rescuecd.sourceforge.net/download.html

If you would prefer to use floppy disks over a CD you can use something like:
http://www.debian.org/distrib/floppyinst

There is plenty of documentation there about retrieving the disk images and writing the disks. With the floppy at the lilo prompt you can specify to boot off your hard drive and then just run /sbin/lilo, reboot, and everything should be fixed.