[ltp] Starting over: A21e+port replicator

[Tod Harter]

I'm not really familiar with Xandros, but as a general comment on LILO with 
any flavor of Linux:

LILO should cause you NO hardware configuration related difficulties... It is 
no more "fragile" wrt to hardware configuration than any other boot manager. 
In fact in my 10 years of Linux hacking I've swapped drives in and out of 
completely different systems 100's of times and had few problems aside from 
disk drive geometry issues (which would equally affect windows etc.).

I'll go even further and state that LILO is one of the best boot managers 
there is, period. It can boot all known OSes AFAIK. I wouldn't WANT anything 
else on my MBR!!! One thing is for sure, no version of windows has a boot 
loader that even recognizes the existence of any other OS, so its not 
possible to put any of them on the MBR and boot to anything except windows. I 
believe it IS possible to put LILO on the boot record of an individual 
partion, which you would only want to do if you used some other 3rd party 
boot loader (but honestly I can't think of a reason for doing so).

Overall my impression is that your problems stem from weaknesses in Xandros' 
configuration system, not anything to do with LILO. A good modern Linux 
distro should be every bit as flexible (and more so) than Win 2k when it 
comes to dealing with different hardware configurations. You should certainly 
be able to freely attach and detach external hardware with no problems. 

As an example in Mandrake 9.0 if I were to attach an external USB CD Writer it 
would simply appear immediately as an icon in the "removable devices" folder 
on my desktop. If I wanted to use it to burn a disk I might have to run 
xcdroast as root one time to let it find the drive and set up a configuration 
for it, but from then on whenever that drive was attached to the system I'd 
be able to burn disks on it. Similarly with hard drives, scanners, cameras, 
etc. In a few cases you might need to reboot.



On Saturday 04 January 2003 03:55 am, Alex Bell wrote:
> These are thefirst of a series of questions I will be asking as I prepare
> to try again to install Xandros on my A21e after having had a severe crash
> which required me to have the hard drive cleaned up.  I now have Windows
> 2000 on its own partition, and another partition which had held Xandros.
>
> There is a thread in the Xandros forums which says that the Xandros boot
> manager is fragile, especially if new hardware is added. Though I am sure
> that I made mistakes of my own I think that my problems were worsened after
> I tried to install the external modem.
>
> I use the Thinkpad at night in a port replicator to which is attached an
> external monitor, as well as keyboard and mouse, and use it standing alone
> during most days.  So it is important that the configuration allow for this
> - though I set the external monitor at 800*600, the same as the Thinkpad.
>
> I need to leave Windows 2000 on the computer, and be able to double boot.
>
> The A21e has a winmodem which is not supported by Linux.  The port
> replicator does not have a PCMCIA slot, so I want to attach a serial
> external modem to the port replicator and use it for both Windows and
> Linux.  I also expect to add a USB external CD-Rom writer to the port
> replicator in a few days so as to be able to back up (at least) my data
> before I re-install Linux.
>
> So my questions are:
> - Should I add the external modem and CD-Rom writer and get them running
> under Windows before I re-install Linux? - Should I install Linux on the
> Thinkpad standing alone before trying to get the external monitor, modem,
> and CD-Rom writer working under Linux?  Or should I try to install with the
> Thinkpad in the port replicator with everything added? - Is there any way
> to have Xandros install its LILO somewhere else than the MBR of the Windows
> partition? - Is there any way of saving the MBR to diskette and
> re-installing it if I have another crash? - Can anyone comment please on
> the Acronis software, which has its own 'boot manager' as well as
> partitioning software?  Or is there any other way of double booting rather
> than using the Xandros LILO?
>
> Incidentally, should I be asking each question in separate posts rather
> than all at once?
>
>
>
>
>
> Regards, Alex
> http://www.onlink.net/~outreach/
> http://www.southcom.com.au/~outreach/
> http://www.tassie.net.au/~abell1/oboe.htm

-- 
Tod Harter
Giant Electronic Brain