[Wylug-help] "Your system may not be bootable"

[Jason Lander]

Ann

> I installed a 2.6 kernel, and during the install it remarked that I may
> wish to install lilo.  Since I'm familiar with lilo and not with grub,
> that seemed a good idea.  It went on to say that I should run
> liloconfig, then /sbin/lilo.  At the end of the config routine it said
> it had been unable to write the boot record to the MBR of hda1, and
> that my system may not be bootable.

You can see the contents of the MBR on hda1 by running....

  dd if=/dev/hda1 bs=512 count=1 | od -c

BEING very careful to type if= not of= in the dd command.

If it has GRUB installed, there will be the letters G R U B in there 
somewhere.

A Debian system will usually install another boot loader on the boot 
record of the whole disk (/dev/hda). This will load and run the real boot 
loader on the MBR of one of the partitions.

- Jason