Re: lilo

[Steven Pritchard <steve@silug.org>]

Kurtis Schlimme said:
>   Hmm, I'm having a problem getting a linux box to boot from its harddrive
> while using lilo.  I've put lilo in the MBR but when it boots it says: DISK
> BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS RETURN

This drive doesn't happen to use one of those DOS partition table
translation things like Disk Manager or EZ-Drive, does it?

The only good reason I can think of that lilo wouldn't *really* get
written to the MBR is if the kernel has seen one of those translated
partition tables and is using that.  You should be able to tell if you
have something like that installed from the bootup messages.  When
your partition table is read, you'll see something like this normally:

 hda: hda1 hda2

If you have EZ-Drive on that disk, you'll see something like this
(from memory, so I might not be exactly right):

 hda: hda1 hda2 [EZD]

If I'm not mistaken, if that happens you do one of two things.  First,
you can boot from a DOS floppy and fdisk the drive.  (DOS doesn't know
about those translators unless you boot from the drive with the
translation.)  You could also accomplish the same thing with an
ancient (1.2.x or earlier) Linux boot disk.  Your other option is to
write lilo to the superblock of the Linux partition you want to boot
from and mark that partition active.

Steve
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steve@silug.org           | Linux Users of Central Illinois
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Steven Pritchard          | http://www.luci.org/ for more info

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