[ale] Lilo problem

[Gary Maltzen]

As the MBR contains only four primary partition definitions, most boot
loaders are limited to booting a primary partition.

The way LILO gets around this is by recording the ABSOLUTE disk address (LBA
or C/H/S) of the second stage loader in the MBR. This is also the reason you
get the broken "LI" prompt when you (re)move the partition containing the
LILO second stage loader.

Just because a system needs to BOOT from a primary doesn't mean it needs to
RUN from a primary. My laptop uses the NT boot selector to choose between
loading NT, 95 or Linux in the following configuration:

  hda1 - 100MB FAT16 C: boot
  hda2 - extended
  hda5 - 600MB NTFS (NT D:) system
  hda6 - 400MB FAT32 (OSR2 D:) system
  hda7 -  64MB swap
  hda8 - 600MB ext2 (Linux root) system

where "system" means the OS runs off that partition, i.e.

  hda5 "D:\WINNT" and "D:\Program Files"
  hda6 "D:\WINDOWS" and "D:\Program Files"

and, conveniently, I can use hda1 to transfer files between OS.

----- Original Message -----
 From: Neil Bright <ncb at cc.gatech.edu>

...[snip]...

I've had problems with DOS bases OS's in logical partitions.  It seems
that they aren't smart enough to deal with (booting from) anything other
than a primary.  Fortunately, Linux doesn't care.  :)