Re: Linux, FAT32 and a mighty odd MBR.
On Thu, Oct 30, 1997 at 01:15:06PM +1100, Dale Harrison wrote: Until it came to LILO. Installed LILO, booted Linux fine. Added the lines to boot Win95, it took 2 goes for it to install the new record [it never complained the first time about failing]. Problem is, it simply doesn't boot Win95. It says booting Win95, then returns to the LILO prompt. The problem remains, I can't seem to overwrite the MBR, not with LILO, not with fdisk. I found out that the Windows partition was FAT32, but surely I bet FAT32 is the problem. It is not DOS-compatible, so existing disk utilities cannot operate on it. We had that problem at work: a department got a DTP computer with FAT32 and we can't work on it, because our scandisk and f-prot won't work on it. Under Linux there's a kernel patch to recognize FAT32 partitions, but it's still experimental. Since Lilo works differently than any other Linux utility (it writes the physical address of the partition's bootstrapping code into its menu, because when Linux is not booted yet and names such as /dev/hda2 have no meaning yet. Perhaps FAT32 has a different disk header format or something. If not too inconvenient, you may want to reformat the Win95 partition to FAT16. That may be less of a headache in the long run until all the utilities have had time to catch up. This is all based on secondhand knowledge -- I've never used FAT32 myself. -- ** MICHAEL SCOTT ORR [EMAIL PROTECTED] * ** 1405 NE 56th Street, Seattle, WA 98105 USA * English * ** Tel: +1 (206) 522-9627, fax: 328-6209 *Russki * ** * Esperanto * * (Insert silly quote here) -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Re: Linux, FAT32 and a mighty odd MBR.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Where can one find information about /sbin/activate? I have it on my system (Debian 1.2.18), but no man pages, How-To, or other documentation. It does not give any meaningful response to activate -h or activate --help. What does this program do? According to the very short help: ~$ /sbin/activate usage: /sbin/activate device [ partition ] i.e. /sbin/activate /dev/hda 2 it seems to set the bootable flag in the partition table, the example above would make /dev/hda2 the bootable partition on your first IDE hard disc. Torsten -- !07/11 PDP a ni deppart m'I !pleH Fortune Cookie PGP Public key available -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Re: Linux, FAT32 and a mighty odd MBR.
-Original Message- From: Dale Harrison [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: debian-user@lists.debian.org debian-user@lists.debian.org Date: Wednesday, October 29, 1997 9:26 PM Subject: Linux, FAT32 and a mighty odd MBR. Hello. I had a weird problem last night, installing Debian 1.3* on a friends PC. For what it's worth, it's a PentiumII/266, some hideous amount of memory, some hideous amount of HD space. Aside from the SuperMicro motherboard bug [Which has been reported, I'm fairly sure..], you know, the one where the bootable cd sits there at the LDLINUX.SYS line.., everything went fairly smoothly. Until it came to LILO. Installed LILO, booted Linux fine. Added the lines to boot Win95, it took 2 goes for it to install the new record [it never complained the first time about failing]. Problem is, it simply doesn't boot Win95. It says booting Win95, then returns to the LILO prompt. Ok, a bit of a hassle. He needs his Win95 stuff more than Linux, so I'll just remove LILO and figure out something else later. lilo -u, lilo -U both complain that theres no LILO boot signature on /dev/hda. Hence nothing is removed. Hmmm. Boot via Win95 rescue disk and fdisk /mbr. Reboot and LILO's STILL there. Tried this more times than I can recall.. LILO won't die. System Commander reported some wacky things about the MBR, saying things were pretty well screwed with it. The problem remains, I can't seem to overwrite the MBR, not with LILO, not with fdisk. I found out that the Windows partition was FAT32, but surely LILO can handle this? [does it make much of a difference with the MBR?] So, I guess I'm throwing this out to you guys, is this a Windows problem? A Debian problem? A LILO problem? A FAT32 problem? Any suggestions for fixing? Thanks, D. Using this setup /dev/hda1 Win95 /dev/hda2 Linux /dev/hda3 Linux Swap /dev/hda Generic MBR, not Lilo /dev/hda1 Win95 Boot sector /dev/hda2 LILO /dev/hda2 is set as active with FDISK. Bios reads generic MBR off of /dev/hda. MBR reads the first sector off the active partition, ie /dev/hda2. LILO is now active. From here, it either reads the linux kernel, or some other, ie chained, partition. Solution: Use FDISK to change active flag. I don't know why you can't boot win95 from lilo's prompt. Could we see your /etc/lilo.conf file? And a copy of fdisk's output? (echo /etc/lilo.conf;cat /etc/lilo.conf;echo -n;echo -e p\nq\n|fdisk)|email.txt Adam Heath [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://wwp.mirabilis.com/3375265 -- Page me -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Linux, FAT32 and a mighty odd MBR.
Hello. I had a weird problem last night, installing Debian 1.3* on a friends PC. For what it's worth, it's a PentiumII/266, some hideous amount of memory, some hideous amount of HD space. Aside from the SuperMicro motherboard bug [Which has been reported, I'm fairly sure..], you know, the one where the bootable cd sits there at the LDLINUX.SYS line.., everything went fairly smoothly. Until it came to LILO. Installed LILO, booted Linux fine. Added the lines to boot Win95, it took 2 goes for it to install the new record [it never complained the first time about failing]. Problem is, it simply doesn't boot Win95. It says booting Win95, then returns to the LILO prompt. Ok, a bit of a hassle. He needs his Win95 stuff more than Linux, so I'll just remove LILO and figure out something else later. lilo -u, lilo -U both complain that theres no LILO boot signature on /dev/hda. Hence nothing is removed. Hmmm. Boot via Win95 rescue disk and fdisk /mbr. Reboot and LILO's STILL there. Tried this more times than I can recall.. LILO won't die. System Commander reported some wacky things about the MBR, saying things were pretty well screwed with it. The problem remains, I can't seem to overwrite the MBR, not with LILO, not with fdisk. I found out that the Windows partition was FAT32, but surely LILO can handle this? [does it make much of a difference with the MBR?] So, I guess I'm throwing this out to you guys, is this a Windows problem? A Debian problem? A LILO problem? A FAT32 problem? Any suggestions for fixing? Thanks, D. -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Re: Linux, FAT32 and a mighty odd MBR.
Dale Harrison [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: So, I guess I'm throwing this out to you guys, is this a Windows problem? A Debian problem? A LILO problem? A FAT32 problem? I can't point out a solution but I can tell you that it's probably not related specifically to Debian or to Linux, as I have had similar problems happen on a Windows-only machine. Every time it booted, even if there were no diskettes in the floppy drives, it would give the message that one sees when attempting to boot to a diskette lacking an OS; i.e., something like Non-system disk, replace and strike any key. The guy eventually had to fdisk reformat as I lacked a decent set of disk repair tools. -- Ben Pfaff [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Senders of unsolicited commercial e-mail will receive free 32MB core files! -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Re: Linux, FAT32 and a mighty odd MBR.
Dale Harrison [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: [snip] Ok, a bit of a hassle. He needs his Win95 stuff more than Linux, so I'll just remove LILO and figure out something else later. lilo -u, lilo -U both complain that theres no LILO boot signature on /dev/hda. Hence nothing is removed. IIRC (since I last installed Debian) LILO doesn't always install on the MBR, but in my case in /dev/hda1. What does your /etc/lilo.conf look like? You could also try to write a new MBR with /sbin/activate /dev/hda 1 or whichever partition Win95's on. -- Carey Evans * http://home.clear.net.nz/pages/c.evans/ gc Neniu anticipas la hispanan Inkvizicion. -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Re: Linux, FAT32 and a mighty odd MBR.
Where can one find information about /sbin/activate? I have it on my system (Debian 1.2.18), but no man pages, How-To, or other documentation. It does not give any meaningful response to activate -h or activate --help. What does this program do? Bob On 30 Oct 1997 Carey Evans [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You could also try to write a new MBR with /sbin/activate /dev/hda 1 or whichever partition Win95's on. -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Re: Linux, FAT32 and a mighty odd MBR.
I don't have an awsome computer like that, but I experianced problems when installing LILO on the MBR with win95. Win95 lost all its long filenames! I'd would try installing LILO on the root partition of Linux. -Paul On Thu, 30 Oct 1997, Dale Harrison wrote: Hello. I had a weird problem last night, installing Debian 1.3* on a friends PC. For what it's worth, it's a PentiumII/266, some hideous amount of memory, some hideous amount of HD space. Aside from the SuperMicro motherboard bug [Which has been reported, I'm fairly sure..], you know, the one where the bootable cd sits there at the LDLINUX.SYS line.., everything went fairly smoothly. Until it came to LILO. Installed LILO, booted Linux fine. Added the lines to boot Win95, it took 2 goes for it to install the new record [it never complained the first time about failing]. Problem is, it simply doesn't boot Win95. It says booting Win95, then returns to the LILO prompt. Ok, a bit of a hassle. He needs his Win95 stuff more than Linux, so I'll just remove LILO and figure out something else later. lilo -u, lilo -U both complain that theres no LILO boot signature on /dev/hda. Hence nothing is removed. Hmmm. Boot via Win95 rescue disk and fdisk /mbr. Reboot and LILO's STILL there. Tried this more times than I can recall.. LILO won't die. System Commander reported some wacky things about the MBR, saying things were pretty well screwed with it. The problem remains, I can't seem to overwrite the MBR, not with LILO, not with fdisk. I found out that the Windows partition was FAT32, but surely LILO can handle this? [does it make much of a difference with the MBR?] So, I guess I'm throwing this out to you guys, is this a Windows problem? A Debian problem? A LILO problem? A FAT32 problem? Any suggestions for fixing? Thanks, D. -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
