Better LILO switch wanted

["Fred H. Olson" <fholson@cohousing.org>]

LILO, the LInux LOader, allows one to select which operating system to
load at boot up time.  The selection is made by typing a little string at
a prompt part way thru the boot up process.  There is a default after a
(15-30 second? ) timeout after the prompt so that for one option -
presumably configured so its the most often used operating system. But if
one does use both operating systems with some frequency, use of the second
operating system requires watching the boot process to type the selection
string at the right time.  And the default operating system does not
require attention during bootup but does take extra time for the timeout.

There's got to be a better way.

Either a toggle switch theat LILO reads somehow or keys typed at the
beginning of the boot that are stored till LILO needs them or some clever
action that LILO can detect.  Any ideas?  I once set up an a switch on an
unused game controller port input to be read by MSDOS's autoexec.bat to
select different configurations.  Something that most everyone has
hardware to implement would be ideal...

This is not a big deal but it is amazing how much more one uses something
tha is convenient than something that is awkward.

Fred

--
Fred H. Olson  fholson@cohousing.org    Minneapolis,MN   55411  
(612)588-9532  Amateur radio: WB0YQM          List manager of:
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