In article <00030413144000.00731@laptop>,
Declan Moriarty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
[snip]
> This is crystalysing for me into one simple problem: your BIOS does
> not recognise the /boot partition with linux installed as a system
> disk.
That's the conclusion that I have drawn as well.
> The other real possibility here is that lilo is setting up a
> different spot from the one the bios reads as the boot record.
And that's why I have emailed Werner Almesberger (author of LILO) just
a few minutes ago as well. ;-)
> Then the system would look for a boot record, miss it, and howl for
> the system disk.
Yes.
> What's the lzone setting in the bios?
I don't have such a setting in the BIOS!
During startup I get the following two messages:
SystemSoft MobilePRO BIOS Version 1.01 (2482-00)-(R1.27)
and
SystemSoft Plug-n-Play BIOS Ver 1.17.01
Now the interesting part: I have found another person with a totally
different notebook, but with the same BIOS, having exactly the same
problems!
> It should be '0' or 'number of tracks - 1' (524). But with 128 heads
> showing, each 'track' in the bios is 8 tracks on the normal format
> (i.e.16 heads), and as your disk really only has 2 heads,
No, it has 16! The geometry that is printed onto the hard disc is
(c/h/s): 4200/16/63. And the one recognised by Linux is (c/h/s):
525/128/63.
> the lies to the hard disk controller get thicker and thicker. I'd
> set lzone to '0' and run lilo again
I can't set lzone in the BIOS.
> .. If you make the same partition (tracks 1-3), format is for DOS,
> and boot off a Dos floppy system disk and execute "sys A: C:"
> will it boot from the hard drive? I bet it will.
It will.
> Then if you change partition type, reformat, run lilo, and boot
> linux from it, it will not. Correct?
It won't, correct.
> ergo, the linux boot system of the distribution you use is not
> recognised by the BIOS,
I have tried LILO from a SuSE CD, from the Debian and from a "linux on
two floppies" system. Didn't matter.
> or it's in the wrong part of the disk.
What?
> I would try installing a floppy based distribution - one of those
> miniature ones. It could be the version of Lilo.
As said above: I tried alphaLinux and its LILO. Didn't help.
> Don't laugh, but you might try this. Write a floppy, with your
> kernel named io.sys, your System.map called msdos.sys (Dos
> attributes here are read-only, hidden, system) and some other file
> called command.com. The Dos "sys" command might just place them for
> you correctly. This would leave /boot as a Dos format disk, but you
> should be able to run the system this way. This is heresy, I know,
> but at least it's funny even if it doesn't work ;-)
And what happens, if I compile a new kernel? Then I have to copy over
the kernel as io.sys to the floppy, restart into dos mode and make
again "sys a: c:"? Well ... :-/
> (as you can judge, all technical stuff is done by the seat of the
> pants here ;-)
:-)
> One other idea worth a whirl is to use dd to read the boot record
> and write loads of copies of it. As dd just copies the data, you can
> 'format' your disk with boot partitions, (i.e. copy the boot sector
> to every sector in the /dev/hda1 partition) and then try again. This
> time it should read the boot sector, and then freeze, If this occurs,
> you have a location problem.
I don't quite understand this. You suggest something like
dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hda1 bs=512 count=1
dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hda1 bs=512 count=1 skip=1
dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hda1 bs=512 count=1 skip=2
dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hda1 bs=512 count=1 skip=3
...
(I hope I got the skip syntax right, I have never used it before)
> Let us know how you get on. You've got me going on this one.
I will, I will.
Thanks again for your help.
Greetings,
Stefan.
--
Stefan Bellon * <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> * <http://www.sbellon.de/>
3 kinds of people. Those who can count and those who can't.
