Sidney Brooks wrote:
In case it may be of help to someone in the future, this is how I got
into my printer troubles.
I installed Windows98, Redhat 6.2, and Debian Potato on three separate
partitions of my hard drive. I dutifully made boot floppies for Redhat
and Debian. However, Redhat gives you no choice about lilo, it
installs it whether you want it or not. It can be removed by using
fdisk /mbr in Windows, but I decided that as long as I had it, I would
add Debian to it.
I used linuxconf in Redhat, entered the Debian partition,and the
location in Debian, i.e. /boot/vmlinuz2.2.19pre17. Linuxconf refused
to accept it. I then remembered that in some earlier linux
installations, lilo insisted on vmlinuz without anything else.
Therefore, I changed vmlinuz2.2.19pre17 to vmlinuz and linuxconf
accepted it. Using lilo, I booted into Debian and saw the Debian
programs.
What I didn't know was that lilo took the vmlinuz from the Redhat boot
directory not the Debian boot directory. It did not care that it had
been referred to the Debian partition. I thus ended up with the Redhat
kernel and Debian accessories, which didn't work together.
Subsequently, I learned that a could copy vmlinuz2.219pre17 from the
Debian boot directory to the Redhat boot directory and then use the
full name in linuxconf. With this lilo boots each of the three
operating systems correctly.
Why I can't get onto the internet with either version of linux remains
a mystery. At the moment, I still feel that it is a BIOS problem, but
I can't find anything to change.
I suspect that you're still loading Redhat's root partition, thereby
mixing Redhat and Debian. In your "/etc/lilo.conf" file will be a line like:
root=/dev/hda2
Irregardless of which kernel you're loading (Redhat's or Debian's), this
(/dev/hda2) is the partition you're mounting as the root partition,
which is probably Redhat's since Redhat is the distro that installed lilo.
To override this, at the LILO prompt, enter something like:
linux root=/dev/hda3
This will mount root on /dev/hda3 (Debian's) rather than on /dev/hda2
(Redhat's).
This will also mean that "/boot/vmlinuz" as defined in '/etc/lilo.conf"
will no longer be found, since previously "/boot" was mounted on
"/dev/hda2" instead of "/dev/hda3". I'm not sure what you'll need to do
to get around that little glitch.
(The above assumes that Redhat is on /dev/hda2 and Debian is on
/dev/hda3; make adjustments accordingly.)
Summary: Basically I still think you're mixing Redhat and Debian, which
may (or may not) be at the root of your problems.
Kent
