{bailed out} Do lilo and grub/2 interact with each other?

[needlern]

For years, I remember lilo was my boot loader. Can lilo still be my boot loader, even though I used Grub/2 to format my sda drive?
If there is no communication between the two, what do I format my disk with to carry on with lilo?

TIA,
Bill
_________________
amd64, 1 gig memory. I'm a hobbyist scuba diver. I've dived down to 132 feet in the Caribbean's Great Blue Hole. I'm also a God loving Christian.

[Havin_it]

Hi needlern,

First of all you say you used GRUB to format a drive, but this is not what GRUB or any bootloader does, so I'll assume that you mean you installed GRUB as the bootloader on this drive so you could boot the computer off it.

Now to your questions: GRUB and LILO do the same thing, and while it is possible (I guess) to have both packages emerged on your system, only one of them can be installed as your bootloader on any given drive at one time. The two programs do not take any notice of each other, so it just comes down to which one you actually install to the drive's Master Boot Record* at the start of the drive (this is a manual operation done after emerging either program).

You can by all means install LILO as bootloader instead of GRUB (I've never used it so you will need to read its manual on how to do this), and if you are happy with it then you have no further need of GRUB and can unmerge it.

*My use of this phrase assumes you have a BIOS-based computer and MSDOS-style drive that you boot from. On many newer computers the BIOS is replaced with a system called EFI (or UEFI). If this is the case, your drive will have on it a small FAT partition where the bootloader lives (it will contain some files with .EFI extension). If this is the case, know that GRUB1 will not work (GRUB2 does), nor will LILO but I believe there is ELILO for EFI systems. I'm guessing your computer is BIOS-based as, if it was EFI, you'd probably already have had to learn all this -- as I did -- just to get Gentoo installed in the first place!

I hope this all makes sense. Feel free to post any follow-up questions if need be.

[needlern]

Thank you Havin_it. I appreciate your answer. I've gotten side tracked recently. I am staying with grub2. I now have another problem that I will address with a new post (someday I will get gentoo installed)!

Bill
_________________
amd64, 1 gig memory. I'm a hobbyist scuba diver. I've dived down to 132 feet in the Caribbean's Great Blue Hole. I'm also a God loving Christian.