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getting Fedora and Slackware to boot from Grub

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by a former member

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I have a system with two hard drives. I have W2k and Fedora dual booted on /dev/hda and I've installed Slackware 9.1(2.4.22) on /dev/hdb.
I've kept the root partition on /dev/hda3 (Fedora). I can boot into Slackware using a boot floppy but whenever I try and configure Grub on the Fedora distro, I've discovered that Slackware does not have an initrd.img file. What I've been told is that Slackware doesn't use an initial ramdisk.
I'm using Grub for the bootloader and what I'm trying to do is have all available Oses show up at the grub bootup screen.
I also DID NOT configure Lilo during the install and am just using Grub from the Fedora distro.
What I'm trying to do is just add the Slackware info into my Grub.conf file and then be able to boot it from the Grub startup screen.
When I tried to boot without the img file I got a kernel panic VFS: unable to mount root fs on 3:43.

Basically, what I'm asking is this:
1) Is there a mkinitrd command to create the initrd image?
2) Do I have to configure Lilo on Slackware to help do this?
3) Or is there another way to get Slackware to boot without the img file?

Thanks

4 replies

by passwordchanged

Col Luck will be by soon to post a complete response ---OOPS --- sorry you are supposed to put these questions in Tech Q&A. instead Col will be by shortly to FLAME YOU for beign so stupid as to not know how this site works

by hal 9000

That you will get a faster responce if you where to post this in the Q & A section as you will get an automaite e-mail whenever anyone posts a responce.

Also you will get someone from you're time zone who can offer you more help at you're time rather than relying on me from a far different time zone.

Now to you're problem, if you make a subroutine in you're startup section and place the required files in it from the boot disk it should boot from the HDD rather than from the floppy.

If you require any more help on this you can contact me directly through the peer listings but as I'm in AU you might have to wait some time for a responce as we are in completely different time zones.

Col

by Former member

Thanks for the advice about where to post.

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