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Stray Dog Joined: 29 Sep 2001 Posts: 5

I'm trying to follow the dual boot tutorial on this site for win2k and Redhat Linux but after I've installed Linux and I'm to the part where I need to use my bootdisk to load up Linux and copy the lilo config over to win2k the disk fails. When its loading initrd.img it gives me this error:

Boot failed: please change disks and press a key to continue.

I have two hard drives, one with Win2k and the other with Linux. I loaded lilo on the Linux hard drive so I can't get into it without the bootdisk. I have installed Redhat multiple times and its never created a good bootdisk, anyone know why?

Thanks,
stf

Moderator Joined: 26 May 2001 Posts: 8155 Location: Borneo

did you do it with more than one physical floppy? they have a high failure rate

The redhat cd can probably be used as resue cd. Don't know that for sure but is likely

Stray Dog Joined: 29 Sep 2001 Posts: 5

I'm reinstalling right now and I'm going to try another floppy. I did see a recover choice on the cd boot menu if I remember correctly I'll try to check that out to.

Thanks,
stf

Moderator Joined: 26 May 2001 Posts: 8155 Location: Borneo

Quote:

I'm reinstalling right now and I'm going to try another floppy. I did see a recover choice on the cd boot menu if I remember correctly I'll try to check that out to.

Thanks,
stf

remember on which partition you did your / . That is what you have to know when you are trying to use the cd as rescue.

Stray Dog Joined: 29 Sep 2001 Posts: 5

Ok after reinstall the bootdisk (new one) still didn't work. So I put in the cd and went to the rescue section. It got me to the shell and put an image of my system under /mnt/sysimage. So I got under there and it showed all my dirs. So I mounted the floppy which seemed to go fine (I saw the light flash on the drive). Then I copied LILO boot sector to disk which also seemed to work since it read the disk and said records in/out. So I put the disk into another machine to see if it had got copied but nothing was there, it didn't put linux.bin on the disk. I also tried accessing the disk through /mnt/floppy but it doesn't even find or accesss the disk through that dir. Anything I should try under the recovery shell?

Thanks,
stf

Moderator Joined: 26 May 2001 Posts: 8155 Location: Borneo

chroot /mnt/sysimage
after this the linux will (sort of) think that what is one the harddisk is / . Then type in mkbootdisk to make a bootdisk. This should make a bootdisk but if it doesn't work i want to see the error-message

You can't see the flopy at /mnt/floppy because you didn't mount it. For dd, what is used to make the bootfloppy, the floppy doesn't need to be mounted

ps /sbin/mkbootdisk is a shell-script so reading it is not only possible but also adviseble

Stray Dog Joined: 29 Sep 2001 Posts: 5

When I just type 'mkbootdisk' it just defines its usage:

usage: mkbootdisk [--version] [--noprompt] [mkinitrdargs <args>] [--device <devicefile>] [--verbose -v] [--compact] <kernel> (ex: mkbootdisk --device /dev/fd1 2.0.31)

Tried typing in the example just to see what it would do and it said:
/lib/modules/2.0.31 is not a directory.

Thanks,
stf

Moderator Joined: 26 May 2001 Posts: 8155 Location: Borneo

After reading the article i have decided to do it differently. my excuse of your inconviniance:-D

1: boot system with redhat cd as rescue cd

2: #chroot /mnt/sysimage

3: check if /etc/lilo-conf points to /dev/hda5 or whatevery you have as root of your linuxsystem, you can check this in your /etc/fstab file

4: #lilo check for errors if none go to next stage

5: install mtools. It is probably on the redhat cd's, if not download it and put it on a floppy. It lets you read and write dosfloppies without mounting them

6: mtools uses almost the same sintax (don't know if it's written correctly and if you get what i mean) so dir a: becomes mdir a:
copy a:readme.txt ~/ becomes mcopy a:readme.txt ~/
del becomes mdel, cd -> mcd,

7: #dd if=/dev/hda5 bs=512 count=1 of=/root/linux.bin

8: #mcopy /root/linux.bin a:

9: exit out of chroot by #exit

10: reboot with #shutdown -h now

11: start w2k

12: now i listen to you how to do it[ Very Happy

]

Moderator Joined: 26 May 2001 Posts: 8155 Location: Borneo

Quote:

When I just type 'mkbootdisk' it just defines its usage:

usage: mkbootdisk [--version] [--noprompt] [mkinitrdargs <args>] [--device <devicefile>] [--verbose -v] [--compact] <kernel> (ex: mkbootdisk --device /dev/fd1 2.0.31)

Tried typing in the example just to see what it would do and it said:
/lib/modules/2.0.31 is not a directory.

Thanks,
stf

/lib/modules/your_kernel/ is

Stray Dog Joined: 29 Sep 2001 Posts: 5

csign:

YOU ARE THE BEST!!! It finally works!

Unfortunately in the process I found out that it didn't install gcc or at least it didn't put its place under the PATH var. I couldn't compile mtools so I had to use the RPM to install. Other than that its working great!

Thanks!
stf

Moderator Joined: 26 May 2001 Posts: 8155 Location: Borneo

Quote:

csign:

YOU ARE THE BEST!!! It finally works!

Unfortunately in the process I found out that it didn't install gcc or at least it didn't put its place under the PATH var. I couldn't compile mtools so I had to use the RPM to install. Other than that its working great!

Thanks!
stf

I don't think gcc is installed under the PATH var(more /usr/bin). But installing them after the fact isn't that difficult.

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