This program searches all primary partitions of all harddisks available, according to the PC BIOS, for LILO. If LILO is found, it loads and starts it. It only looks in partitions of the type 0x05, 0x0f, 0x83, and 0x85. Type 0x83 means "Linux native", the other types are used for extended partitions. Starting with version 1.8, this program also searches the boot sectors of the logical partitions for a LILO signature.
BEWARE: this program only works with partitions that start on a cylinder below 1024!
It is intended to be used to boot LILO through the boot menu of Windows NT.
The search order is: harddisk 1 - partition 1 through 4, then harddisk 2 - partition 1 through 4, and so on.
Build the program by typing 'make', it shouldn't be necessary to edit the Makefile. The resulting program is called "bootsect.lnx". If you want, 'make debug' generates a program called "bootsect.dbg", which spits out some debugging information while looking for LILO. Normally you won't need this. You will need the bin86 utilities though.
You can use the prebuilt binary, called bootsect.lnx, as well.
This program is placed under the GPL, see the file "COPYING" for details.
To use this in the boot menu of Windows NT, follow these steps:
- Take "liloload.b" and name it "C:\BOOTSECT.LNX" in Windows NT. Make it at least a read-only system file.
- Edit "C:\BOOT.INI" and add the following line at the bottom of section [operating systems]: C:\BOOTSECT.LNX="Linux"
November 5th, 2000 - Ferdy Hanssen <hanssen@croky.net>