Re: [gentoo-user] anyone using Lilo to dual-boot ?

[Mick]

On Monday 12 July 2010 06:52:03 Philip Webb wrote:
> My cousin in England wants to try out Linux & has an Ubuntu Live CD.
> To help her, I've installed the same on a separate partition in my box.
> The partition is  /dev/sda8  & is formatted ReiserFS.
> I use Lilo as boot manager & don't want to change to Grub
> just to offer temporary help to someone,
> so I refused to let the Ubuntu installer overwrite my MBR,
> hoping to get Lilo to see Ubuntu via an appropriate 'lilo.conf'.
> I've managed to get Lilo to add Ubuntu to the boot menu,
> but only by mounting  /dev/sda8  as  /z/mount8  & using the line
>
>   image = /z/mount8/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-21-generic
>
> However, when I reboot & select that image via its label,
> I'm getting the hoary old 'VFS: can't open root device "808"'.
> I've tried adding a dir  /z/mount8  in the Ubuntu partition
> with a symlink of 'boot' to '../../boot' there, but it doesn't help.
> This does look rather messy, but I just want to be able to boot Ubuntu
> in order to advise my cousin when she starts using her version.
>
> Is anyone successfully dual-booting Linux distros using Lilo ?
> Might it be ReiserFS ? -- should I re-install Ubuntu with another FS ?

I think Ubuntu is using GRUB2.  Anyhow, I suggest you install a separate boot 
partition with an ext2 fs and you install GRUB2 there instead of the MBR.  
Then chainload it from your LILO bootloader menu.
-- 
Regards,
Mick