[huskerlug] Re: Serious hard drive/boot loader problems! (LONG)
- From: "J.R. Wessels" <jwessels@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: huskerlug@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2002 13:07:12 -0500
I had that problem with the LI showing up, but only on older systems. To fix
it, I told Lilo to work with the drive in linear mode, not lbr. That was by
adding this line in the lilo.conf file....
linear
On Wednesday 07 August 2002 5:27, you wrote:
> Hi guys,
>
> I'll start out with the story. I purchased a 40 gig western digital 7200
> rpm at best buy to use as my linux drive. I installed it as a master on
> the second channel, on the first channel i have a 60 gig maxtor with
> windows xp.
>
> Anyways, I installed suse 8.0 from the ftp. It took along time. I awoke
> the next morning to find it almost completed noticing it didn't give me an
> option to install lilo. (Probably because i took so long to respond, it
> automatically installed lilo to the mbr on /dev/hda) So I happily rebooted
> my computer. Lilo fires up and issues this message: "LI".
>
> Ok, this gave my an opportunity to fix lilo and learn a lot about it. I
> wasn't sure what the problem was, but I read quite a few how-tos on lilo.
> I restored the mbr to the windows xp bootloader then I loaded up my linux
> rescue disk, mounted my newly created suse partitions and accessed them
> with ease. I wanted to reinstall lilo on the mbr of /dev/hda (master on
> first channel). So i issued the command "lilo -M /dev/hda" (after
> configuring lilo.conf). Lilo reported "mbr updated". I rebooted, lilo
> didn't even install itself. I fired up the rescue again, and issued the
> commmand "lilo". I knew this was suppose to install lilo on the mbr of the
> current drive (/dev/hdc). It errored saying "can't handle device 0x0102".
> Someone on irc told me that was the device kmem. Which made sense, since
> my rescue loaded everything on the ram disk.
>
> At this point i decided to give up on suse 8.0 on this computer. So
> installed mandrake. The install went without a hitch. Rebooted, lilo
> worked like a charm. At this point I thought it was a suse-lilo problem.
> I wasn't sure. Mandrake didn't satisfy my needs and I wanted to try redhat
> 7.3. So installed it with lilo(keep in mind i'm installing linux on the 40
> gig western digital /dev/hdc) rebooted and the same error "LI". I tried
> grub with redhat 7.3, receiving the error "GRUB ". I thought this was
> weird. So i ran all the diagnostics i could think of. Western digital
> includes a nice diagnostic disk. I ran everything on that disk, and it
> checked out ok. I booted up windows xp to run partition magic 7.0.
> Partition magic reported an error about the second harddrive saying it
> could fix it. So i let it fix it. Tried installing redhat again. It was
> no good, same problem. I loaded windows again and partition magic
> complained of other errors that it couldn't fix. It wouldn't even let me
> repartion my hard drive.
>
> I installed mandrake again, it worked without a problem. Loaded up windows
> again, ran PM and more errors, i formated the disk this time to fat32 to
> run some of the windows diagnostics. No errors.
>
> I decided the hell with it. I thought the drive might be bad, so exchanged
> it for another one. I installed redhat 7.3 on this new one and the same
> problem occurred.
>
> I have no idea what is causing these problems. The only thing that i can
> think of is that i have a hot swapable hd bay that i bought from DIT for
> like 13 usd. But the bios doesn't see it, and it seems to be transparent
> to everything. Another problem i thought of was, that i have an ata66 ide
> cable in an ata33 controller. But i knew that shouldn't cause a problem.
> But what is so weird is that mandrake installs and boots ok, but redhat
> 7.3, suse 7.3 and suse 8.0 don't.
>
> Any ideas guys? I'm so damned lost... sorry this is so long. I know i can
> put lilo on a floppy, and i don't have a problem doing this, i just want to
> know what is causing these problems.
>
> Any help would be appreciated.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Jon Paul
>
>
>
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J.R. Wessels
jwessels@xxxxxxxxxxx
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