The difference between LILO and GRUB from my point of view are LILO never forced me to manually pass to it blocklists numbers while GRUB faced me with that problem. So LILO’s blocklists usage is transparent from users point of view. That’s my whole point.

Assuming yancek’s and impert’s posts above it could be impossible indeed but it isn’t my fault but Ubuntu team’s fault.

Who’s Hans in the above context?

Hans Reiser is reiser - or was. Unfortunately a search these days will probably only find reference to his incarceration, not his ideas.
His attitude was always .... abrasive.

He also mentions suse.
Personally, I'd give it a try: just edit the boot options as you are booting. I don't see what you've got to lose.

See also this thread.

Thank you for clarification.

You're absolutely right. Now I can't chroot to the installed system so I have to install it anew. Then I'll try once again to force Mint to use bootloader on the first partition. When it fails I'll install Mint's bootloader in MBR.

Can you try booting your existing install from a Grub CD or a live CD with Grub (not syslinux) on it (pressing 'C' while it's booting), and edit the kernel line (hit 'E') to add that "notail" option? That might just save your existing OS.

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I realize the links I posted were not currernt which is why I said the problem has been around for a while. I'm don't have any information on which Linux systems used the Grub/reiser combination but I used Suse Linux 9.2 exclusively for about 5 years and it was reiser and booted with Grub Legacy without problem. I don't remember the exact phrase I googled yesterday but, it was something like "boot reiser with grub". There were many more links than I posted, I just picked a few and as I recall almost all of them were Ubuntu or its derivatives.

I have no idea what the solution to this problem could be. Maybe it will work on your new install? Luck!

I booted existing installation of Mint using Mint DVD but I didn't know about 'C' and 'E' switches. I already installed yesterday Mint anew and then I overwrote MBR with Slackware LILO. So I'll start struggling with Mint and GRUB anew.

Now I'm testing my new ThinkPad X60s which I bought yesterday. So for some time I'll be away from Mint. But soon I'll try your advices. Thank you for your constant assistance.

The first difference is you use GRUB Legacy in SuSE and I use GRUB2 in Mint.

Do you keep /boot directory on root partition or on separate one?

Do you keep bootloader on the system partition or on MBR?

I keep /boot directory on root partition and I try to put bootloader on the same ReiserFS partition.

Thanks!

Yes, Suse Linux 9.2 used Grub Legacy and your Mint is Grub2, don't know if that could be the problem but Grub2 is still beta software, AFAIK.

The boot directory was in the root partition.

Well...both. The main Grub files on the partition and the stage1 in the mbr.

I tried notail option but the result was the same as before. Mint's version of GRUB definitely dislikes ReiserFS. I decided to give up. I can live with GRUB's menu instead of LILO's one. Thank you guys for your assistance. I don't mark that thread as solved because it isn't solved at all.

I finally solved that problem. The solution is here.