Problems may arise when attempting to boot a system with the LILO boot manager configured with YaST. The creation of a system boot disk fails with more recent SUSE LINUX versions because the space available on a floppy disk is no longer sufficient for the start-up files. Instead, create a boot CD. This solution is only a work-around. It should normally be possible to configure LILO properly. Refer to the documentation about this subject in /usr/share/doc/packages/lilo/README, or read the man pages man lilo.conf and man lilo.
It is possible to create a bootable CD-ROM containing the Linux start-up files if your system has an installed CD writer. It is easiest to create a bootable CD with the ISOLINUX boot manager. The SUSE installation CDs are also made bootable with isolinux.
Boot the installed system first using the following alternate procedure:
Boot from the installation CD or DVD as for installation.
Choose the preselected option
during the boot sequence.Choose the language and keyboard map next.
In the following menu, choose
.The root partition is automatically detected and the system is booted from it.
Install syslinux with YaST.
Open a root shell. The following commands create a temporary directory and copy the files required for the booting of the Linux system (the isolinux boot loader as well as the kernel and the initrd) into it:
mkdir /tmp/CDroot cp /usr/share/syslinux/isolinux.bin /tmp/CDroot/ cp /boot/vmlinuz /tmp/CDroot/linux cp /boot/initrd /tmp/CDroot
Create the boot loader configuration file /tmp/CDroot/isolinux.cfg with your preferred editor. Enter the following content:
DEFAULT linux LABEL linux KERNEL linux APPEND initrd=initrd root=/dev/hdXY [boot parameter]
Enter your root partition for the parameter root=/dev/hdXY. It is listed in the file /etc/fstab. Enter additional options for the setting [boot parameter], which should be used during booting. The configuration files could look like this:
DEFAULT linux LABEL linux KERNEL linux APPEND initrd=initrd root=/dev/hda7 hdd=ide-scsi
The following command (entered at a command prompt) then creates an ISO-9660 file system for the CD.
mkisofs -o /tmp/bootcd.iso -b isolinux.bin -c boot.cat -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table /tmp/CDroot
The complete command must be entered as one line.
The file /tmp/bootcd.iso can be written to CD after that with graphical CD writing applications, like K3b, or at a command prompt with cdrecord -v speed=2 dev=0,0,0 /tmp/bootcd.iso -eject. Change the parameter dev=0,0,0 according to the SCSI ID of the writer. Determine it with the command cdrecord -scanbus. Also refer to the man page cdrecord.
Test the boot CD. Reboot the computer to verify whether the Linux system starts correctly from the CD.