[Techtalk] Syslinux/Lilo boot floppies...

[Alvin Goats]

> You should be able to pass kernel parameters by editing the "append" line
> in syslinux.cfg which you'll find on the boot floppy.  My mindi[0] syslinux
> boot config looks like:
> 
> label compare
>   kernel vmlinuz
>   append initrd=initrd.img ramdisk_size=24000 rw root=/dev/ram0 
> 
> among other stuff.  You should be able to add 'hdc=ide-scsi' to this line
> on the boot floppy.  That said, you should also be able to pass it to the
> kernel at boot time also.  Have you a bad syslinux in Slack 8.1?
> 

It wouldn't allow me to do anything at the boot load prompt and I didn't
try to wade through mounting the disk and seeing how it was set up. This
would be like most people who are using any distro of Linux, either they
don't have time, don't know how, or couldn't figure it out. (I was just
lazy, being busy getting other things configured and working). 

I've always used the Lilo boot floppy when setting up the newer release
just to forceably keep things seperate. This was the first time I used
the syslinux disk, so I had some configuration issues that I wasn't
aware would happen. I made a new syslinux disk 3 times after getting
everything configured as it *should* be, and continued to have problems.
That left me with thinking I may need to use the Lilo boot disk to get
everything working properly, that maybe there are some things with
syslinux that are not fixed when you fix Lilo.

Since I've seen similar confused discussions on various mailing lists, I
thought I'd pass on what I found here. If someone is using a syslinux
boot floppy and are fixing lilo or grub, the fixes being recommended may
never work. The user may "think" they are doing things right, but are
using the wrong boot floppy. It would be like having a lilo boot floppy
and configuring grub, grub never works because they keep using the lilo
boot floppy.

HOWEVER, I'll be looking at the syslinux boot disk to learn more about
it!


Thanks Conor,


Alvin