Sorry about being a bit repetitious with this post in this thread -
firstly, I didn't correct typos in the last one, and then the more
important part, with the questions, simply had fallen off. And to top
it off, the dang ISP made me lose a number of mails Friday evening
(anything that may have come in between Fri 20th ca. 17 GMT and Sat
21st. ca 07 GMT ! - did somebody send me something ?)
Thus about getting a genuine, bootable DOS parttion on this tricky
Toshiba labtop:
I had managed to resize the Win$ partition, and to add a DOS
partition (and to give the major part of the HD to Linux) with the
help of the Mandrake-Linux install; evidently this one uses its Linux-
own "fdisk" for the job. It did install LILO fine, but not with a
booting alternative to the (new) DOS partition - certainly because there
is no boot loader there of any/the right kind: All attempts failed to put
one in there, and when I marked the DOS partition as bootable, it would
*only* boot to DOS and couldn't see the Win$- nor the Linux-partitions
any more, and sure not even LILO.
Thus the situation is: there *is* one (apparently correct,
DOS-formatted, FAT16) DOS partition, one - reduced size - Win98
partition (and at the very end of the 2.2 GB HD, there is another, small
Win$ partition of 16 MB which is originally Win$-installed, and hidden:
evidently, Win$ has some system and control files there and need that
to run; with the Mandrake resizing tool this could be seen and left
alone nicey), and a large HD section - with three partitions: /boot,
/(root), and /own - for a genuine Linux residence. LILO boots nicely
into Linux and into Win$; it shows the DOS partition, but only if I
leave "ignore table" in the respective LILO-configuration section.
Otherwsie, or if it has "table=/hda" or "table=/hda5" (which would be
the precise one), LILO protests with "no boot record" there.
So how do I get a working booter to that DOS partition into LILO ?
The problem - evidently, and promptly - is Win$. I did get all sorts
of good coexistences of DOS and Linux in various other installations.
Using LOADLIN wouldn't be the best alternative in this case, as this
would mean to boot into the cripple-"dos" of Win$ if I wanted to use that
"legal" installation of Win98 (gRRR) on this HD too. (If I used a real
DOS - which would be DR-DOS 7.02/3 - there would promptly be "version"
incompatibilities and Win$ would crash.)
I have played around with a thing called "Partition Manager", and
could not arrive at a good solution (yet). Perhaps, because this one
apparently treats the one-single HD in that way that it makes one
"primary" partition (which would go to Win$), and have all the rest in
an "extended" partition. Which is Ok. for the tiny bit of the
Win$-secret partition at the end of the HD, and for Linux, but again
would not like to install a DOS-MBR in the DOS partition (as this one is
in the "extended" section, thus a no-no.)
This is why I wonder if PTS's fdisk would do the trick - apparently, and
following Bob's longuish description re using HDs of >500 M, the PTS-own
"fdisk" does install *primary* partitions all over the place. So would
it work, for instance, to have one "second primary" partition to place
the genuine DOS and DOS-MBR on (and perhaps an extended partition
*there* too, with most of the HD space, for Linux) ?
// Heimo Claasen // < hammer at inti dot be > // Brussels 2000-10-21
The WebPlace of ReRead - and much to read ==> http://www.inti.be/hammer
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