[Slackbuilds-users] lilo

[Tim Dickson]

On 16/02/2018 18:18, Ythogtha wrote:
>> hi all, this may be off-topic,  as lilo comes with slackware, but I have
>> created a patch to allow lilo to work with nvme disks. I am working on
>> patching liloconf  to do the same.there are 2 questions I have, as lilo
>> is "no longer developed" - but works just fine - apart from for nvme
>> disks :-)
>> 1. what is the best way of seeing if patrick is interested in the patch, and
>> 2. is anyone interested in testing the patch?
>> At the moment I have patched the source for lilo, and after manually
>> configuring the lilo.conf it works for me, but I only have 1 nvme disk,
>> so am not sure how it presents for multiple nvme "disks".
>> a quick
>> dd if=/dev/nvme0n1 bs=512 count=1|grep LILO
>>    comes up with a match. where previously I had to use sys/extlinux as
>> lilo refused to work.
>> specifically if someone has more than 1 nvme drive i am interested in
>> the output from
>> cat /proc/devices
>>    and
>> cat /proc/partitions
>>
>> many thanks, Tim
> 	From what I've read, it seems that Patrick is mostly the de facto
> maintainer of lilo because no other distribution seems to really use it anymore.
> 	This nvme problem is really the only one that had bothered me recently,
> and I didn't dig enough to find a solution, but I am very glad that you did ! My
> work laptop has an nvme main disk, and I had to put a /boot partition on the
> secondary non-nvme disk for lilo to work.
>
> 	So, I, for one, would be ok - and happy - to test your patch, although
> not on a real 2-nvme system, but on 2 nvme systems ;)
>
> 	Maybe, for easy testing purposes, you could create some sort of
> lilo-nvme SlackBuild ? I don't know if it is worth it, but it might make for
> easier testing.
>
basically it would just be the existing slackware build with the extra 
patches applied.
  I have a test qemu virtual machine with up to 3 nvme drives on it, as 
well as a single real nvme drive.
to Richard Shepard.  nvme drives use the pcie bus instead of sata (and 
so can work up to 3 times faster).
Amaude is correct. nvme disks have device macjor 259, and minor number 
starts at 0 and goes up one at a time, as you add partitions or opther 
nvme devices. My patch increases the size of the block device table, so 
that nvme devices (typically device 252) are visible in the table, and 
if an nvme device is present, it allows the  259 major device to be used 
by lilo.  I still have to work on liloconfig, but if I find somewhere I 
can use online I can post the current patch for those interested. PS. 
usuall disclaimer. it works for me YMMV. don't test on real system.