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(?) trouble w/ dual boot

From Jeferson

Answered By Mike Orr, Heather Stern, John Karns

(?) <html><head><meta http-equiv='content-type' content='text/html;'>

(!) [Heather] Aaaaargh :) allow me to quote my favorite wimpy, but totally virus proof mailer --
[text/html is unsupported, treating like TEXT/PLAIN]
(somewhat after the fact, I note that there can be good reasons to do this - foreign character sets maybe - but leave plaintext plain, okay?)

(?) Hey guys, how r ya doing huh ?

I'm having a little problem here with my OS, I've installed Conectiva Linux in the Master HD and I had the MS windows installed ins the Maste Slave hd, what can I do to have a graphical interface or even an easier way to boot in the system, without having to go to the system setup and change the boot order ...

Can ya help me ???

(!) [Mike] Have you looked at the HOWTOs at www.linuxdoc.org? http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX/howtos.html Search for "Windows" and "Win" in the text. There are several HOWTOs about making Linux coexist with Windows.
Also poke around www.linuxnewbie.org for other information you might find useful.

(?) I've already looked at the HOW-TOs and my problem is a bit different, there is any way I can manage the boot, like... now I want to boot with Win32, I just reboot the pc and choose MSWIN, later I'll be in a mood to boot with Linux, then I reboot the system and choose LINUX, I've already tryied with "system commander", the Grub... wait a second, isn't grub a graphical interface for the LILO ? how can I change the configurations of the lilo, where is it's configuration file?

(!) [Heather] /etc/lilo.conf is a text file that /sbin/lilo (a progam) uses to compose LILO (the boot loader). It's usually quite well documented in /usr/share/doc somewhere, in a directory named either lilo, or lilo with a version number. And in 'man lilo' plus those HOWTOs that Mike mentioned.
grub is not a GUI for LILO particularly; it's a boot loader in its own right. But you can use it to point at LILO as a second stage if you want.
GAG, the initials are for the spanish words of "Graphical Boot Manager", is an entirely GUI bootloader, and it is its own configurator - that sounds a bit more like what you are really asking for. The link's quite slow for me but might be a bit closer to your ISP there in Brazil:
http://www.rastersoft.com/gageng.htm
Gujin is another alternative bootloader, it's supposed to be smart enough to look for bootable drives or kernels on its own, so it doesn't need setup:
http://gujin.sourceforge.net
But if I misinterpreted what you want, there are GUI tools which run under X to help you set up /etc/lilo.conf - among them Glilo (GTK), Klilo, lilo-config, or BootRip.
(!) [John] Also, later versions of lilo have a gui-like interface which offer a menu with a 'point & shoot' menu-bar. BTW, even the older lilo versions offer a "menu" of sorts, if you press the '?' key at the boot prompt, which will display a list of available choices; although you still have type the selection rather than "point & shoot". Even this can be minimized by using a short label in your lilo.conf:

See attached jkarns.lilo.txt

If your machine is fast enough and has ample memory, you might also consider installing VMWare, and avoid having to reboot. Although if you're a gamer, it might not offer what you want. Anyway, they are offering an "express" version for $50, which isn't so expensive. I've been very happy with the software, but it's running on a 700 Mhz machine with 128 MB of RAM. Even w2k runs fast enough to be satisfactory. I also purchased a copy to run on a 500 Mhz / SCSI machine which is a bit slower, but still tolerable. A 380 Mhz / IDE / 64 MB machine is also usable, but a bit too slow to be pleasureable.
There are other products available both commercial (e.g., Win4Lin) and GPL (Wine). Re: wine, it is indeed a formidable task to emulate an entire API on a foreign OS. They deserve lots of credit for getting as far as they have, but it's still alpha. I haven't looked at Win4Lin so can't comment, except to say that I believe that VMWare is the most mature product in this venue. BTW, they also offer a version for w2k / NT to host Linux, but since I think that Linux is the more stable OS, it seems a better idea to use Linux as the host =:< ;)
(!) [Heather] Well if he is a gamer, I really think he ought to look at Transgaming (http://www.transgaming.com) and see if their WINE + ActiveX solution works for his games. I saw a demo at LWE and it ran Diablo for MSwin directly; I was impressed.
Lilo also supports a value called "alias" and if you make it a single character then you can even get one-tap loading. Here's about the simplest example that works -- assuming you have the world's plainest configuration, basically, C: at the start, "all one big slash" for the second partition with a linux kernel named "vmlinuz" at its root, your swap partition invisible at the end, and no framebuffers or other hardware oddities requiring an "append=" line. /vmlinuz could be a symlink to wherever you really keep your kernels, if you prefer. 
boot=/dev/hda2
single-key
image = /vmlinuz
  label = linux
  alias = 1
other = /dev/hda1
  label = dos
  alias = 2

(?) PS: Sorry about the HTML

(!) [Heather] That's okay, now you know :)

(?)

Thankx Jeferson

(!) [Heather] You're welcome

This page edited and maintained by the Editors of Linux Gazette Copyright © 2001
Published in issue 71 of Linux Gazette October 2001
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