Topic: Multiboot using BeOS Boot Manager

[Michael Smith]

I'm trying to construct a triple-boot machine with Windoze 98,
BeOS 5 and e-smith 4.1.1.  I've installed e-smith on its own hard
drive, which I've then moved to secondary master, then installed
Windoze & BeOS on a primary master.  Be's Boot Manager finds
all the partitions all right, but when I select the e-smith boot menu,
the message

Boot sector signature not found

comes up.  I've tried reversing the primary & secondary and
configuring lilo to do what I want but I haven't had any luck
there either (possibly because I didn't remove the Be boot
manager from the other HDD).  

Any pointers on getting either the Be boot manager or lilo to
get me triple-booting would be greatly appreciated.  Your time
in considering this is also appreciated.

Regards,
Michael Smith

[Robert Boerner]

Wouldn't do it

Seriously, e-smith is designed to take over the whole disk drive you installed it on, and when you did the install as the primary master drive, it sets up the fstab file (as well as lilo.conf) to point to certain partitions (which get labeled as being on the Primary Master Drive). When you moved it, everything changed from the fstab file point of view (and from lilo's). You could go ahead and modify the /etc/fstab file by hand (you did make the emergency floppy didn't you? , but again...e-smith is really meant to act as a stand alone box.

As far as removing the Be boot manager, when you did the e-smith install, it nuked it. It completely wipes the disk including the MBR.

Don't get me wrong, I love BeOS. I am running 5.03 Pro, and triple booting it with Redhat 7.0 and Win98SE.

[Michael Smith]

Your reply is duly noted.  I understand that e-smith wants its own hard drive,
and so it has ... the secondary master.  What I want is a way to persuade
the BeOS boot manager to hand off to lilo at boot time and run e-smith
from the secondary master (hdc).  WinDoze & BeOS have hda.

I had high hopes for a procedure I just performed:  I re-set up e-smith
booting from CD at primary master and HDD at secondary master.
E-smith booted just fine, and I ran lilo just to be sure, with lilo.conf
reflecting hdc.  Checked fstab, too.

Rebooted without CD, everything's great.  Repowered primary master,
re-set up Boot Manager, no boot.  Same message, "Boot sector
signature not found."

I'd be more than willing to use lilo to triple-boot, but the BeOS
boot manager is a little slicker.  If any of you linux gurus can point
me in the right direction with lilo, that'd be fine.  (My first several
attempts have failed.)

I know this triple-boot is possible!!!  

Thanks to all who've paid attention thus far.  Replies are appreciated.

Robert Boerner wrote:
>
> Wouldn't do it
>
> Seriously, e-smith is designed to take over the whole disk
> drive you installed it on, and when you did the install as
> the primary master drive, it sets up the fstab file (as well
> as lilo.conf) to point to certain partitions (which get
> labeled as being on the Primary Master Drive). When you moved
> it, everything changed from the fstab file point of view (and
> from lilo's). You could go ahead and modify the /etc/fstab
> file by hand (you did make the emergency floppy didn't you?
> , but again...e-smith is really meant to act as a stand
> alone box.
>
> As far as removing the Be boot manager, when you did the
> e-smith install, it nuked it. It completely wipes the disk
> including the MBR.
>
> Don't get me wrong, I love BeOS. I am running 5.03 Pro, and
> triple booting it with Redhat 7.0 and Win98SE.

[Michael Smith]

failed (more or less) ... haven't been able to make it work at all, even with
BootMagic by PartitionMagic.  I bet lilo could do it but I haven't been able to
make that work either, not even when I re-set up e-smith on hdc (mobo will
boot from secondary master).

I can boot e-smith but it requires going into the BIOS and setting the
secondary master to be the boot drive.  Clunky, but I can have all
three OSes.  Thanks to everyone who took the time to consider this.

[Michael Smith]

PROBLEM SOLVED!  Thanks to a kind soul in alt.os.beos,
who reminded me that lilo.conf needed to reflect boot=/dev/hdc1,
rather than boot=/dev/hdc ... a tiny change that made all the
difference.  Lilo warned me that /dev/hdc1 was not on the first
drive but added it anyway, and after I set up the BeOS Boot
Manager to boot that partition, zoom, off it went!

My thanks to those who took the time to consider my situation.