Seems like it has something to do with my BIOS. I placed the CFA into
another, more recent machine with the autoconfig for the IDE
controller. RH linux came up, showing 489/4/32 in /proc/.../. I
manually set my BIOS to those settings on the older machine, booted up,
same results. I then placed the CFA into another machine as the
primary master, manually set the bios to the right CHS settings, and it
booted LRP (Granted with some errors, but I got a login). without
changing anything on the CFA, I placed it back in the old box, verified
CHS, same issue.
I need to read through that doc that you sent over a little further.
Nothing jumped out at me right away. The only thing I saw in there was
suggestions to give the CHS info to the kernel on bootup via append =
"hda=C,H,S". I tried this at the syslinux boot: prompt to no avail...
Hmm. Maybe time to ditch the 486???
Billy
--- Charles Steinkuehler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > In my syslinux.cfg file, I have set both boot and PKGPATH to
> /dev/hda1.
> >
> > I mentioned before that I have to specify the drive type in my BIOS
> by
> > sectors, heads, cylinders, etc. Since a CF disk doesn't have any
> such
> > parts, what is the best setting to use? I know by specifying
> different
> > values, it changes whether or not the BIOS can see the boot sector
> of
> > the CF.
> >
> > This is a strange one...any help would be appreciated.
>
> You may have a problem with how the BIOS and linux talk to the drive.
> Linux
> ignores the BIOS information, and talks directly to the CF disk, just
> like
> it's an IDE HDD. Bootloaders have to use the BIOS to talk to the
> drive. If
> the BIOS and LINUX use different geometries, you're going to have a
> hard
> time getting anything running.
>
> You should see what linux thinks your CF disk geometry is. On my
> system, I
> do the following:
>
> debian:/usr/src# cat /proc/ide/hda/geometry
> physical 9408/15/63
> logical 588/240/63
> debian:/usr/src#
>
> You might also try connecting the CF card to a BIOS that auto-detects
> IDE
> drive's geometry, and use those numbers on your older system.
>
> If it's impossible for some reason to coerce your BIOS into using the
> same
> geometry linux uses, you may have to force linux to use the closest
> available BIOS geometry. There's a HOWTO at linuxdoc that covers
> wierd
> geometry problems, and the various IDE size limits you may find
> helpful:
>
> http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Large-Disk-HOWTO.html
>
> Charles Steinkuehler
> http://lrp.steinkuehler.net
> http://c0wz.steinkuehler.net (lrp.c0wz.com mirror)
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Leaf-user mailing list
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/leaf-user
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