In article <1992Oct19.163215.9633@jet.uk> tp@jet.uk (Tarang K Patel) writes:
quoted text
> Now, I can boot to LINUX but when I try to boot MSDOS by typing 
> msdos
> then I get
>            Non system disk .......
> After a wait of 1 minute, lilo boots up LINUX 
> [Q] Where have I gone wrong ?
[ trimmed a few blank lines ]

It is a known bug of LILO to be unable to boot MS-DOS on some systems.
The next version of LILO will try to mimic the original boot loader a
bit better, so there is some hope that this problem may disappear.

I'd suggest as a work-around to put some other boot-switcher into the
MBR and loading LILO from a Linux partition. (See the LILO documentation
for details.)

quoted text
> [Q] What does the line - rdev Image /dev/hda2  ----- really do ?

It determines the device number of /dev/hda2 and writes it into
Image at offset 508. The kernel mounts that device as the root
file system when booting.

There are two different ways to set the root device:
  - when building the kernel, in /usr/src/linux/Makefile:
    change ROOT_DEV =# /dev/hdb1
  - if using LILO, in /etc/lilo/install:
    append ,<device> to the image specification, e.g.
       /linux,/dev/hda2

Personally, I prefer the latter, because with this, I don't have to
care about the root device when "localizing" new kernel sources.

- Werner
-- 
   _________________________________________________________________________
  / Werner Almesberger, ETH Zuerich, CH      almesber@nessie.cs.id.ethz.ch /
 / IFW A44  Tel. +41 1 254 7213                 almesberger@rzvax.ethz.ch /
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