Replacing LILO with GRUB

**t048** · 11-27-2005, 01:09 AM

Just installed Fedora Core 4, coming from the woeful Mandriva 2005. I had LILO installed, but Fedora Core likes to use GRUB, which is fine by me (because the LILO Mandriva installed has this painful graphical interface theme), but I can't seem to get LILO out of the damn way.

Googled "remove lilo" and got plenty of pages, including one from Microsoft. All pages tell me to do one of two things:

* [tt]lilo -u[/tt]
* [tt]fdisk /mbr[/tt]

(You know, after a million pages that say those exact same things, maybe someone ought to create a page that has some new info or something? Perhaps I will after I get this sorted out.)

Anyway, can't do [tt]lilo -u[/tt] because I didn't save the backup image of the MBR it made. Can't do [tt]fdisk /mbr[/tt] because I don't have a floppy drive or a DOS boot disk. So is there any other way I can get LILO off my MBR to make room for GRUB?

Thanks for your help.

**trickster** · 11-27-2005, 01:49 AM

if your hard drive is /dev/hda, then do

Code:

grub-install /dev/hda

Or download a dos boot cd.

There is one here.

**pbharris** · 11-27-2005, 02:16 AM

[quote author=trickster link=board=1;threadid=10816;start=0#msg96987 date=1133056163]
if your hard drive is /dev/hda, then do

Code:

grub-install /dev/hda

...
[/quote]

yup.

**t048** · 11-27-2005, 03:36 AM

[quote author=trickster link=board=1;threadid=10816;start=0#msg96987 date=1133056163]
if your hard drive is /dev/hda, then do

Code:

grub-install /dev/hda

Or download a dos boot cd.

There is one here.
[/quote]

Tried that. I don't recall if it wanted the drive specified in GRUB terms, though (hd0,0) or not. I'll check out that boot CD. Thanks.

**t048** · 11-27-2005, 06:07 AM

That did the trick. There was a program that allowed me to reset the MBR, and the GRUB installation took over when I booted up next :-) (except it was looking at hd1,0 for the boot image which was at hd0,0, but I knew how to set it straight thanks to my fiddling).

Thanks for your help.

**pbharris** · 11-27-2005, 06:20 AM

okie - lets make sure the device.map and grub.conf (for fedora, menu.lst on some other distros) - here is a couple of working ones from my setup which uses SATA drives - which 2.6 kernels set up as SCSI devices.

here is grub.conf

Code:

[root@bugs ~]cat /boot/grub/grub.conf 
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE:  You do not have a /boot partition.  This means that
#          all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /, eg.
#          root (hd0,1)
#          kernel /boot/vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/sda2
#          initrd /boot/initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/sda
default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,1)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
#hiddenmenu
title Fedora Core (2.6.14-1.1637_FC4)
        root (hd0,1)
        kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.14-1.1637_FC4 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
        initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.14-1.1637_FC4.img
title Fedora Core (2.6.13-1.1532_FC4)
        root (hd0,1)
        kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.13-1.1532_FC4 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
        initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.13-1.1532_FC4.img
title 2.6.13
        root (hd0,1)
        kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.13 ro root=/dev/sda2 rhgb quiet
        initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.13.img

here is device.map

Code:

[root@bugs ~]cat /boot/grub/device.map 
(fd0)     /dev/fd0
(hd0)     /dev/sda
[root@bugs ~]

now - what i do when i need to rescue a PC's bootloader is boot from teh CD in rescue mode - mount my root partition (the one with /etc/, lib, etc...) then a chroot /whereimountedit - then i run grub install <drive> where drive could be /dev/hda, hd0, /dev/sda... you get the picture. hth

**AljoshaNL** · 11-27-2005, 12:22 PM

now - what i do when i need to rescue a PC's bootloader is boot from teh CD in rescue mode - mount my root partition (the one with /etc/, lib, etc...) then a chroot /whereimountedit - then i run grub install <drive> where drive could be /dev/hda, hd0, /dev/sda... you get the picture. hth

That's what I did when M$ ruined the MBR