LILO booting off second IDE disk

I'm running Slackware 9.1 with a linux 2.6.16.5 kernel and lilo 22.5.7.2. I have three IDE disks and a cd-rom drive connected to the two IDE controllers on my PC's motherboard:

master on first controller - hda - main root-boot system disk slave on first controller - hdb - secondary boot disk

master on second controller - hdc - cd-rom drive slave on second controller - hdd - data disk with secondary root

I have lilo set up with multiple operating systems installed on the main system disk (hda), everything working fine.

My Award 2000 bios allows me to nominate any hard disk from which I can boot. In the past I've used lilo to boot linux off other disks, but for the life of me I can't do it this time around. What I want to do is install a boot Linux environment (likeboot) on the 'secondary boot disk' (hdb), set the bios to boot off that disk, and thus allow the system to boot totally independent of the master drive (hda).

I've tried any number of things. The bios says that all the drives are LBA-accessible, and a simple lilo.conf works for all the operating systems as you'd expect for the main disk, i.e.:

lba32 boot =dev-hda3

install = menu

map =boot-lilo.map backup =boot

menu-breastle = "Lilo boot from main 120GB disk" message =u-LILO-lilo.msg

image =boot-vmlinuz2.6.16.5 label = linux2.6.16.5 root =dev-hda5 read-only

but setting up hdb1 as a simple filesystem for a kernel boot just doesn't work:

lba32 boot =dev-hdb1 # emergencyboot fileysystem, marked as active

install = menu

map =mnt-lilo.map backup =mnt

menu-breastle = "Lilo boot from emergency hdb1" message =mnt-lilo.hdb1.msg

image =mnt-vmlinuz2.6.16.5 label = linux2.6.16.5 root =dev-hdd1 # second root copy is on this disk read-only

hdb1 is a simple filesystem set up with the files typical for aboot area - the various Linux kernels and the message file lilo.hdb1.msg.

Lilo gives me a warning that I am installing on a disk that "is not the first disk" and when I change my BIOS boot setting to boot off the second drive I just get the infamous sole two letters 'LI' and the system hangs.

Not knowing too much about the inticacies of PC boots, but thinking that when the BIOS boots off a disk other than the primary IDE drive, it might switch the BIOS drive designations around, I added the following to the lilo.hdb1.conf I listed above:

disk=-dev-hda bios=0x81 disk=-dev-hdb bios=0x80

but got exactly the same results. No warning message about not being the 'first drive' any more though; no warning messages whatever. But it still hangs after the 'LI' when booting off the second drive.

Everything I'd expect gets plonked in themnt (hdb1) filesystem after running lilo - a backup of the original boot sector for hdb1, and the lilo.map file.

I've tried using 'geometry' rather than lba32, tried putting in the actual C-H-S that the bios sees, etcetera. Always the same thing.

I'm sure I've been able to do this in the past. There must be something simple I'm missing?

One stupid question - in the past I've used versions of Lilo, I think, that usedboot-boot.b as the secondary-chain boot loader, and would have placed that file, in addition to the kernels, on the secondary disk's filesystem (mounted asmnt, as you can see from the lilo.conf examples above). I gather now, with the later versions of Lilo, that that boot code is now part of thesbin-lilo binary itself? Lilo isn't doing something silly like directly linking in parts of its own binary, is it? Because I'm executing my 'lilo -C lilo.hdb1.conf' command while running under my 'normal' environment, with root mounted from the primary (hda) disk drive.

Any and all help would be most gratefully received. I'm sure I've done this before - booted entirely off a second drive by setting a machine's bios to boot cold off that drive - so there must be something I've forgotten, or otherwise something (obvious) I've missed between old and new versions of Lilo.

Thanks,

Brad