Originally posted here by fyrewall
i did however think that you could use a bootdisk that would infact boot up to your linux os, so that it was the same as using lilo .. all the bootdisk does is get you to your linux installation when you dont have a boot loader configured ... from there you can run linux like normal ?????

is that not right?
No, it's correct, but those disks must be created either by the boot CD/disk at install time -OR- by the installed OS (so it knows where / is). You can hack up a created bootdisk in order to get it to know, and if the bootdisk will allow it, you can also pass a parameter to a standard bootdisk to tell it where the root dir. is, for example:
linux root=/dev/hdb1
If the boot image name is "linux" and the root dir. is on the primary slave drive's first partition.