Boot from harddisk

With docking we saw that simply moving a directory in the root of a partition can let us boot from CD and run from harddisk. This is a very simple and safe way to have a dual-boot system: Cd in for dyne:bolic, CD out for anything else. Still some people really likes to get rid of the CD, so here it is explained how.

Keep in mind that the following operation is not necessary to run dyne:bolic from harddisk. If you are not familiar with boot sectors and partition geometry you might need the intervention of an expert when anything goes wrong. Furthermore, in case of a mistake you might delete all the data stored on your harddisks and/or be left without the possibility to boot back into your old operating system.

In order to boot from harddisk you need a bootloader (Lilo or Grub) installed. We recommend the use of Grub for its simplicity and flexibility: in fact that is the default bootloader dyne:bolic will install for you, but in case you have Lilo already installed and you don't want to change it, then there is also a way to add a dyne:bolic entry to it.

The following instructions will cover various situations: you can omit some operations in case your computer is already setted up with them.

In case you are installing a computer from scratch, without anything installed on it yet, then you need to partition the harddisk and format it. You can do so using the command cfdisk to create or modify your harddisk partitions, then mke3fs to format the partitions (or other mk* commands in case you desire to use a different filesystem than Ext3). Beware that this operation above will erase all the data on the disk.

Once you have a disc partitioned and formatted you need to install the bootloader. To do this use the command grubconfig and follow the steps you are prompted, at the end of the process you will be able to boot your computer directly into dyne:bolic, without the need to use a CD.

To re-configure your bootloader (not necessary if you installed one from scratch using dyne:bolic) go look into your harddisk partitions, in case you have a directory boot/ see if inside there is another directory called grub/, if yes there you found your grub configuration, a simple text file called grub.conf or menu.lst which you have to edit by hand, adding a few lines at the bottom in order to add dyne:bolic among the boot menu selection:

title dyne:bolic RASTASOFT Afro Linux
root (hd0,0) # ADJUST THIS!
kernel /dyne/2618ck1d.krn root=/dev/ram0 rw load_ramdisk=1 max_loop=64 vga=791
initrd /dyne/initrd.gz

After doing that you'll need to set the harddisk where you have docked: where it says "ADJUST THiS" change the (hd0,0) if necessary: hd0,1 for hda2 - hd0,2 for hda3 - hd1,0 for hdb1 and so on... trying wrong values is not dangerous and in case you are confused there is a lot more documentation about this process in the grub manual pages.

In case you have installed lilo, search among your harddisk partitions for the directory etc/ and then inside for the lilo.conf file, if found then add the following lines at the end of it:

image = /dyne/2618ck1d.krn
  root = /dev/ram0
  append = "max_loop=64"
  initrd = /dyne/initrd.gz
  label = dyne
  read-write
  vga = 791

Being sure that the /dyne directory is inside the partition you boot, which in lilo is configured by the boot = /dev/hd* usually at the beginning of the lilo.conf file. Please note the "image =" parameter takes a full path to the kernel file, which is named after it's version in a condensed form, for instance here 2618ck1d stands for 2.6.18-ck1-dyne . The condensed format is necessary for a 8.3 filename restriction of the isolinux CD boot system.

Happy hacking ;)