Copyright (c) 2001 by Miroslav "Misko" Skoric.
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You are strongly recommended to take a backup of your system before major installation and backups at regular intervals.
In addition to the Lilo docs, there are a number of mini-howto's that can be useful for your needs. All of them are called ``Linux+foobarOS'', for some foobarOS, they deal with coexistence of Linux and other operationg system(s). For example, "NT OS Loader + Linux mini-HOWTO" by Bernd Reichert, describes how to add an entry for Linux under existing Windows NT Loader's menu. Next, you have "Linux+WindowsNT mini-HOWTO" by myself, covering how to add an entry for NT under existing Linux Lilo menu (more detailed than here). Also, "Multiboot-with-LILO" describes how the various Windows flavours can be made to coexist with Linux.
This mini-HOWTO would be improved from time to time. If you think that the HOWTO on your Linux installation CD is some out-of-date, you may check for newest release on the Internet. It could be found within the main Linux Documentation Project homepage.
This version of mini-HOWTO can thanks to:
Cameron Spitzer ([email protected]) Alessandro Rubini ([email protected]) Tony Harris ([email protected]) Marc Tanguy ([email protected])
Any comments or suggestions can be mailed to my email address: .
These are intended as the primary starting points to get the background information as well as show you how to solve a specific problem. Some relevant HOWTOs are Bootdisk, Installation, SCSI and UMSDOS. The main site for these is the LDP archive at Metalab (formerly known as Sunsite).
These are the smaller free text relatives to the HOWTOs. Some relevant mini-HOWTOs are Backup-With-MSDOS, Diskless, LILO, Large Disk, Linux+DOS+Win95+OS2, Linux+OS2+DOS, Linux+Win95, Linux+WindowsNT, Linux+NT-Loader, NFS-Root, Win95+Win+Linux, ZIP Drive, FBB packet-radio BBS. You can find these at the same place as the HOWTOs, usually in a sub directory called mini. Note that these are scheduled to be converted into SGML and become proper HOWTOs in the near future.
In most distributions of Linux there is a document directory installed, have a look in the /usr/doc directory. where most packages store their main documentation and README files etc. Also you will here find the HOWTO archive ( /usr/doc/HOWTO) of ready formatted HOWTOs and also the mini-HOWTO archive ( /usr/doc/HOWTO/mini) of plain text documents.
Many of the configuration files mentioned earlier can be found in the /etc directory. In particular you will want to work with the /etc/fstab file that sets up the mounting of partitions and possibly also /etc/mdtab file that is used for the md system to set up RAID.
The kernel source in /usr/src/linux is, of course, the ultimate documentation. In other words, use the source, Luke. It should also be pointed out that the kernel comes not only with source code which is even commented (well, partially at least) but also an informative documentation directory. If you are about to ask any questions about the kernel you should read this first, it will save you and many others a lot of time and possibly embarrassment.
Also have a look in your system log file ( /var/log/messages) to see what is going on and in particular how the booting went if too much scrolled off your screen. Using tail -f /var/log/messages in a separate window or screen will give you a continuous update of what is going on in your system.
You can also take advantage of the /proc file system that is a window into the inner workings of your system. Use cat rather than more to view the files as they are reported as being zero length. Reports are that less works well here.
There is a huge number of informative web pages out there and by their very nature they change quickly so don't be too surprised if these links become quickly outdated.
A good starting point is of course the Linux Documentation Project home page, an information central for documentation, project pages and much, much more.
Please let me know if you have any other leads that can be of interest.