On Fri, 2007-11-30 at 21:21 +0100, Anders Johansson wrote:
> On Friday 30 November 2007 12:32:21 Dave Howorth wrote:
> > I'm trying to install 10.3 on a 4-year old 32-bit machine. I don't do
> > enough installs to remember all the gotchas, so it's always a fraught
> > process if anything goes wrong :(
> >
> > I blew a 10.3 DVD, verified it and ran the installer. It all went
> > happily and eventually started installing the packages so I went home
> > and left it to it. This morning I came in to find
> >
> >   Missing operating system
> 
> The 10.3 system installs the boot loader to the partition containing /boot, 
> leaving a standard MBR that does nothing except hand over to the partition 
> marked "bootable" in the partition table.

Thanks for this. It's useful. Is there anywhere I can read more?

> My guess is that you have the wrong partition marked as bootable.

I don't think so. The /boot partition is marked bootable on that disk
and the other disk has a partition with the dreaded lilo marked
bootable. I don't see any evidence that either is being reached.

> Boot the rescur system, run fdisk -l, and see which partition has a * in the 
> Boot column. If it's the wrong one, you can change it with the "a" command in 
> fdisk
> 
> On the other hand, if it's the right one, there is something wrong with your 
> MBR. You can use YaST to set this by enabling the option to install a 
> standard MBR in the bootloader installation section

Agreed, I'd already launched the rescue system and used cfdisk to check
the bootable partitions :) On Monday, I'll find time to try patching the
MBR but I'll use the grub-based method I found on a web page first.
Given that the Suse installer / YaST messed it up in the first place,
and that Suse's repair system is broken, I don't trust it to fix it!

Once the illusion of magic is shattered, I prefer to get my hands into
the dirt and see just what's there.

> You should however be able to finish your install by booting the installation 
> system again and selecting "boot installed system" when it asks you what you 
> want to do. Once it completes you can log in, run YaST, and reinstall the 
> boot loader, with the correct option
> 
> But try fdisk first
> 
> Anders

Thanks Anders. I'll let you know how it goes on Monday.

> Madness takes its toll

Ain't that the truth!

Cheers, Dave
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