On Wed, 27 Oct 1999, Salman Ahmed wrote: > >>>>> "J" == John <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > J> Firstly, when I boot, I do not get an opportunity apply any > J> parameters - the reference to (I think) Peter Anwin and the boot > J> prompt do not appear - the word 'loading' and a fast moving line of > J> dots then right into the 'init' and up comes the log-in screen. (No > J> time to pick up my coffee mug). What have I omitted? > > I too have the same 'problem'. When I initially installed Debian a couple > of months ago, that was one of the first thing that I noticed. The Debian > boot process does not seem to give any opportunity to enter boot > parameters, the way that Redhat does by pausing at the LILO: prompt.
As a newbie, I have had many problems -- still trying to get X Windows to correctly run :( -- but I found what (at least seems to me) to be a cool fix for this problem you mention above. I installed Red Hat 6.1 (doesn't take very long) and installed LILO on the Master Boot Record. Then, I installed Debian over it, formatting the drives and everything. BUT, when I came to the point in the installation where I told it to make linux bootable directly from hard disk, it gave me the following message: "The root filesystem is installed in a logical partition. LILO can't boot from there, so you must install LILO in one of the following extended partitions. Please select the partition to use:". At this point, I hit cancel and then go ahead and make my boot floppy and then reboot. Essentially, I have left the Master Boot Record alone. Then when I boot up, I have the opportunity to boot either into Windows or Linux. Bryan Walton
