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SubjectRe: 2.1.93..
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>Thus the BIOS fails to load LILO, but instead loads something off the
>other drive instead? You did say there are only two drives...

I tried to illustrate using two drives. I see that I should have
used a three-drive system, instead, to make the point plainer.

...
>Your example appears to demonstrate perfectly what I was saying: If
>LILO knows which drive it was loaded off, it knows which is the boot
>drive, and thus which is the boot controller, thus it can label any
>other drives on the same controller correctly.

Incorrect in the more general case. Short of using disk
labels or, say, checksums on the kernel images (but what about the
rest of the filesystem?), there's no way for lilo to determine which
drive is which.

The logic you proposet has a certain appeal: if the kernel
image is on the "other" drive when the config file was read, then load
it from the "other" drive, regardless of drive numbering at boot time.
It would be an interesting special-case recovery strategy.

...
>In addition, if there's not more than one other controller, it can
>then label the drives on the second controller correctly as well,
>irrespective of any renumbering that may occur.

Imagine, please, thecase that adrive is moved from one controller
to another. If it helps, imagine that there are several other drives on
each controller.

>As a result, the only problems appear to occur when there are THREE or
>more controllers, in which case it can correctly identify which is the
>primary controller by the fact that LILO was loaded from a drive on
>that controller, but it then needs some means to determine the order
>of the remaining controllers...

Sigh. Yes, imagine, then three drives and/or controllers.

Craig Milo Rogers


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