In article <00030310104601.00227@laptop>,
Declan Moriarty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Fri, 03 Mar 2000, Stefan Bellon wrote:
[snip]
> > > pii233:~# fdisk -l /dev/hda
> > >
> > > Disk /dev/hda: 128 heads, 63 sectors, 525 cylinders
> > > Units = cylinders of 8064 * 512 bytes
> I'm no expert on this LBA stuff, but I have never seen more than 64
> heads in an LBA spec. Maybe I just have small disks or ancient BIOS.
> Have you tried changing from LBA to NORMAL in the BIOS and then
> redetecting the HD.
I don't have such BIOS functions available. My BIOS just says that I
have a 2 GB hard disc. That's all. I can't change anything.
> It will come up with about 4200 cylinders, and 16 heads
That's what is printed on the label of the hard disc and I already
verified that (see my first posting):
> > > pii233:~# hdparm -i /dev/hda | grep LBAsects
> > > CurCHS=4200/16/63, CurSects=4233600, LBA=yes, LBAsects=4233600
> but that information will be accepted. You have boot as /dev/hda1,
> don't you? It doesn't seem to be that big, certainly not over 500
> megs.
No, just 10 MB.
> From memory, the 8.4 Gig limit was/is made up by 1023 cylinders, 63
> heads, & 63 sectors or something like that.
Right. At least that's what the HOWTOs say as well.
> On an entirely separate note, in Dos, the "Insert System disk into
> drive A:" was the sure sign of a dud hard disk. The bios would spit
> that out when it failed to read the boot sector, or read something
> else instead.
Yes, that's what I wondered as well. But in just this moment I'm
installing Windows 98 on the same hard disc and it boots fine. :-/
> You may be up the wrong tree checking out Lilo. The errors are
> usually stupid there, and you're obviously not.
Thanks. :-}
> There are a few other things to check in the BIOS
> Boot order A: C:
> 1st boot device 1ST HARD DISK
> 2nd boot device FLOPPY
Tried that as well. Didn't help.
> And check whether the bootable flag is set on /dev/hda1.
It is:
> > > pii233:~# fdisk -l /dev/hda
> > >
> > > Disk /dev/hda: 128 heads, 63 sectors, 525 cylinders
> > > Units = cylinders of 8064 * 512 bytes
> > >
> > > Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
> > > /dev/hda1 * 1 3 12064+ 83 Linux
> > > /dev/hda2 4 36 133056 82 Linux swap
> > > /dev/hda3 37 525 1971648 83 Linux
^^^^ as you can see here.
> The more my brain works on this, the more it's sounding like a dud
> 1st partition. As a last resort, try booting on a system floppy and
> something like this
> cd / (your actual directory will be wherever you mount the /
> partition)
> mkdir spareboot
> cp /boot/*.* /spareboot
> fdisk (in which you delete /dev/hda1, and remake a hda1 with the
> available space)
> format and reload with the contents of /spareboot and run LILO again.
> That might do it. It's the M$ solution, but (like M$) it just may
> work :)
Well, this was a brand new installation of Linux! In fact it appeared
immediately when doing the first reboot after the Debian setup.
But as I now install Windows 98 in order to see whether everything is
ok with that, I have to re-install Linux anyway. We'll see.
Thanks for the help.
Greetings,
Stefan.
--
Stefan Bellon * <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> * <http://www.sbellon.de/>
1/1=1.089089789701234132 : It's close enough. (Intel 1994)
