Fixing MBR with lilo with a non-boot drive

[galapogos]

Hi,

I'm trying to update the kernel on a hard drive with Linux installed on it. Let's call this HDD1. HDD1 doesn't allow me to boot up normally, so there's no way I can get a shell on it and apply lilo as a boot drive.

I have another Linux installation which I boot from. Let's call this HDD2. I then connect HDD1 to the system that is booted up to HDD2. HDD2 is detected as /dev/sda and HDD1 is detected as /dev/sdb.

I then mount HDD1 on some directory, say /fix, as follows:

mount /dev/sdb1 /fix

Then I go to /fix/etc and edit the lilo.conf to point to the new kernel in the "image = " section.

How can I apply lilo and write to the boot sector of HDD1 instead of HDD2? Is it the following?

chroot /fix/ /sbin/lilo -v -v

Thanks.

[Lazydog]

It has been some time since I worked with lilo. Here is what I would try;

download and burn either fedora or centos cd 1
boot into rescue mode and let it mount the drive of the system
run '/mnt/sbin/lilo -C /mnt/etc/lilo.conf' (I believe this is where it is mounted. Please check after boot)

That should install lilo on the MBR of the drive you have configured in lilo.conf.