Giulio Orsero wrote:
......
> - what's on hda now? You say 2 partitions, is it hda1 for swap and hda2
> for root fs? Is it hda1 for /boot and hda2 for rootfs (no swap?)
> - you booted from hdc and mounted hda under some dir?
>
> 1)
> If you booted from hdc and want to make hda bootable by running lilo (so
> that next boot the system will boot from hda), then you need to add to
> lilo.conf (that I suppose is into hda)
>
> disk = /dev/hda
> bios = 0x80
>
> this is because if you boot from hdc lilo is confused and does not now
> that hda will be the 1st hd on next boot. This should eliminate the
> message about 0x82 not accessible.
>
> 2)
> then you need to comment out all the "other = " part (the dos label)
> since you didn't restore a dos/win partition on hda.
>
> 3)
> If you want to boot from hda a linux install that is into hda you ave
> another problem; have you recreated the disk labels (/12) on hda? If not
> you'd better modifying lilo.conf:
> comment out:
> append="root=LABEL=/12"
> add:
> root = /dev/hdaX where X is the right number for the root fs
>
>
> So, it all depends on what's exactly your config now.
>

There is one swap partition on hda1 and one linux partition on hda2.
Both have clean file systems. I tried "root=/dev/hdc2' but that didn't
work. However, you got me to thinking and the following "lilo.conf"
works just fine:
prompt
timeout=50
default=linux
boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
message=/boot/message
linear

image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.20-8
label=linux
initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.20-8.img
read-only
append="root=LABEL=/12"

Really appreciate your time and effort. It help me solve the problem.