hello,

i have problems installing the bootloader "LiLo" right. as you probably
know, despite its name, LiLo is supposed to boot other OS's as well :-)

in my PC (yes, i386) i have a scsi disk and a ide disk, the 2nd
boot-floppy (floppyB32.fs) recognizes them as sd0 and wd0. however it
only lets me choose the wd0 (ide) disk to install OpenBSD on. that's ok
- i wanted to install OpenBSd on wd0 anyway. but where is sd0
gone....nevermind.

for the protocol: wd0 is connected to an onboard ide-controller, but as
i said it's recognized and floppyB32.fs is aware of it.

after the first install ("successful") i was about to boot from the scsi
disk. on the scsi disk Lilo was supposed to bring me to Linux first,
then i could modify lilo.conf to boot OpenBSD then.

but no! OpenBSD was booting right from the scsi disk! this was strange
anyway, but cool, since i am trying to get this dual-boot situation for
many times now (last successful multiboot with OpenBSD and Linux and
Other was with OpenBSD 2.9 or so). ok, OpenBSD was booting from
harddisk, the wrong one, but ok. a recovery floppy allowed me to boot to
Linux then, i really have modified lilo.conf and added these lines here:

## openbsd
other=/dev/hde4
label=OpenBSD
table=/dev/hde
optional

and yes! i tried it out and OpenBSD was bootable again with Lilo!
hm, i don't know why my last attempts failed.
but then again i wanted to testify. i installed only "some" of the
packages, now i wanted to install "all" of the packages in wd0a. ok, the
packages are *.tgz anyway, i could have done this via "tar..." on the
cmdline too. but, stupid me, i choosed to "[u]pgrade" OpenBSD. and it
managed to install "all" packages...but then it wrote the bootsector
again. at least, it said it did so.
hm, i thought: ok, now OpenBSD will boot from scsi again, althought this
is not possible, but it has done so the last time.

Nope, Lilo came up. OpenBSD was in the menu, but booting brought this
"error....bad magic" error (you know?).

ok, booted to Linux, re-run /sbin/lilo, nope, same error ever and ever.
i also get a now error message from lilo now:

prinz:~$ lilo
Added 2.5 *
Added 2.5-old
Device 0x2100: Inconsistent partition table, 4th entry
CHS address in PT: 0:1:1 --> LBA (63)
LBA address in PT: 32 --> CHS (0:0:33)
The partition table is *NOT* being adjusted.
Added OpenBSD
Added memtest86

why should suddenly my partition table on wd0 (hde) screw up?
why did lilo boot my OpenBSD the last time?

i then tried severals things and installed OpenBSD a few times, always
letting OpenBSD touch wd0 (editing disklabel and so on). i erased the
mbr of wd0, i erased the whole wd0 (under linux: hde), i zeroed out the
partition-table, started over and let OpenBSD handle all of wd0. with no
success.

again: what i want is a clean install on wd0, OpenBSD can do with wd0
whatever it wants to do. i choose "yes" to spend all diskspace on OpenBSD.
i *could* even modify the MBR of sd0 (my scsi disk), although it is now
supposed to do so. i can boot with some rescue disk to linux then. i
should *not* modify the parition table on sd0 though -- it simply does
not have to.

my run of /sbin/lilo will only touch the mbr of sd0 (here: sda), since
there is a global parameter in lilo.conf (boot=/dev/sda). oh, yes, here
is the global part from lilo.conf

boot=/dev/sda
prompt
read-only
lba32
ignore-table
disk=/dev/sda
bios=0x80
disk=/dev/hde
bios=0x81

so, anyone with skills in Lilo and OpenBSD - please help!
i have made quite good experiences with OpenBSD 2.9 once. with all the
ports-tree and such. installing OpenBSD 3.1 on a Sparc (SS2) was fine
too, there was no multiboot needed :-)
but at this time i really need this other OS as a fallback. i know it
far better than i am familiar with the innards of a *BSD.

further information such as partition tables is available, of course.

Thank you for your time,
Christian.
--
BOFH excuse #386:

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