On Wed, 17 May 2000, Randy Edwards wrote:
> Running LILO now I get an error message about /dev/sda not being the first
> drive (I'm not home so I don't have access to the text). Tell me, does
> LILO read the BIOS to determine the boot sequence of hard drives?
I don't think it accesses the BIOS directly, as that would require switching
to real mode, which the Linux kernel doesn't do. I think it uses a system
call to get BIOS info the kernel read at startup.
On Wed, 17 May 2000, Randy Edwards wrote:
> Box: 3 IDE HDs (hda, hdb, and hdc) and one SCSI drive (sda).
[...]
> the BIOS allows me to set the following boot sequences: "A, C, SCSI", "C,
> A, SCSI" and "SCSI, A, C".
[...]
> Objective: Boot, get LILO onto the SCSI drive, and then reconfig the BIOS
> and boot from the SCSI HD.
Is there a Linux filesystem on the SCSI disk? Set the boot order to "A, C,
SCSI" and disable the IDE controller. That will make the SCSI drive the first
(only) BIOS drive, allowing you to boot from floppy and then run LILO.
Is there a bootable FAT filesystem on the SCSI disk? Copy the kernel file
to it. Set the boot order to "A, SCSI, C". That will put the BIOS in the
right order. Boot the system to DOS, and then use LOADLIN.EXE to boot the
kernel you copied. Then use LILO.
The above are kludges in that they don't solve the problem, but rather
bypass it, but that is often the best solution. :-)
> So to boot off from a floppy I have to boot in the sequence "A, C,
> SCSI". When running LILO it would complain about the SCSI drive is not the
> first hard drive. Duhh, I know that -- I'm going to make it the first HD
> after I get LILO onto it and reset the BIOS. :-)
That message is a warning, not an error. It will still install LILO on the
MBR you specified. However, if your geometry and/or BIOS drive order isn't
correct, LILO's map won't be either, and it will fail at boot.
> Somewhere I read about adding the LILO options:
> disk=/dev/sda
> bios=0x80
> disk=/dev/hda
> bios=0x81
>
> However, after resetting the BIOS to boot from the SCSI drive first, I
> just get the "LI" and then a freeze.
Just "LI" indicates that the second stage boot loader (or what LILO *thinks*
is the second stage boot loader) was loaded, but failed to execute. It could
be corrupt on disk. More likely, you have a geometry mismatch, where the map
installer (/sbin/lilo) and the boot loader don't agree on what the BIOS disk
geometry is.
Try the above in combination with "lba32" or "linear".
You may need to specify the disk geometry manually. The LILO documentation
explains how to do this.
HTH,
--
Ben Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
| "I've already explained this once, but repetition is the very soul of |
| the net." (from alt.config) |
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